The Unfinished Portrait (FIN)
by flyingpianist
Summary: Want a serious read? An unfinished portrait painting of a Chinese man brought the memory of old veteran Ivan Braginsky back to the battlefield of 1941 where he and Wang Yao fought together against Nazi invasion. WW2, Battle of Moscow, Angst & Romance
1. The Old Veteran

This was first written in Chinese. I translate it into English because I think it was one of the best hetalia fan fictions I've ever read and I wish to share the experience with fellow English speakers. This is also posted on Deviant Art and _download_ is available there.

Author: 远方的小白桦

"My humble piece of work could be presented here to you all thanks to our translator's hard work. This story's focus isn't ideologies, but of young men's simple and tenacious relationships under the austerity of war, as well as the sheer yearning to peace of us all. If you could enjoy the reading experience, it will be my biggest pleasure."

Special thanks to Qingmu (DA) who helped me with formatting and did an awesome illustration for this fiction, as well as xblkdragonx (DA) who help with the proofread!

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><p><strong>CP:<strong> Ivan x Wang Yao (RoChu); Toris x Natasha (Lithuania x Belarus)

**Genre:** Historical, Angst, Drama, Bromance (or Romance?)

**Background:** Battle of Moscow, WWII Eastern front.

This fiction is dedicated to commemorating the Victory Day of the Great Patriotic War, as well as to RoChu fans worldwide.

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><p><em>Имя твоё неизвестно. Подвиг твой бессмертен.<em>

_Your name is known to none; your feat remains immortal._

_-Anonymous tomb, Moscow Red Square_

**Ch 1 The Old Veteran**

"Why don't we go ask Professor Braginsky?"

To celebrate the sixty-sixth year's anniversary of the triumph of the Great Patriotic War*, Moscow Art Academy was planning to commemorate it with an art exhibition. Professors and students shared high enthusiasm in their artistic creation. "But, there lacks a good portrait painting." said the academy president . "Certainly, there are quite a few portraits entering the exhibition, but none of their creators have experienced war…"

Yes, there needed to be a genuinely moving portrayal of a soldier. The creator should be just like the dearest hero, depicting his war-torn passion and pain, tears and laughter, love and hatred, in the sincerest way possible. If only did the creator actually fought along with the subject, things would be easier. The president himself had attempted the mission but was never satisfied. After all, he was seven years old when the war ended.

"Isn't Professor Braginsky working on a portrait?" A student suggested.

Speaking of the Great Patriotic War, no one in the academy could have been more sentimental than the ninety-year-old Professor Ivan Braginsky. He was the only teacher still alive who had been to the front. When the war broke out, he left his second-year study in the academy and enlisted, spending the following four years of wartime in the front. After the victory, he went back to college and had since held a teaching position owning to his excellent artistic achievement. For decades, every year on Victory Day*, this proud veteran would put on his clean old military uniform decorated with dozens of medals on his chest, walking in solemness through the admiring eyes of young students.

Now he had retired at home, still remained hale and hearty. Students who came to ask for his expertise would always found the professor in front of a young soldier's portrait, lost in deep thoughts. The portrait had been under cultivation for a long time. In fact, the first bunch of students Braginsky taught since he came back from the front had seen it—President Vasilenko was one of them. At the first sight, Vasilenko (who was still a student back then) was deeply touched by it: a young handsome soldier with black hair, his soft facial structure characteristic to East Asian was effused with a young man's disposition of nobleness and bravery; the delicate but firm lips brimming a sense of austerity and tenderness peculiar to someone who had endured the ordeal of war-flame. "What a heart-touching portrait!" Even decades later when the academy president Vasilenko recalled, he could not help but gasped in admiration. "Professor Braginsky never drew eyes for the young soldier, but even as an unfinished portrait, one could still see the beautiful soul of this young man."

"It was a Chinese—my comrade from the front." Every time with curious inquiries, Ivan Braginsky would answer as such. "He returned to his country when the war ended."

For decades, Professor Braginsky had painted numerous pairs of vivid eyes, but below the brows of this young soldier's portrait was still shadowed with uncertainty; otherwise, the painting would had claimed the name of another masterpiece. It became a mystery of the academy. Later, another curious incident regarding this portrait started circulating. According to a student who had recently seen the portrait, Professor Braginsky added a pendant with shape of a white horse to the subject's neck in the painting—exactly the same as the one hanging from the professor's chest.

To plead the professor for completion of this masterpiece, students came to visit him. As they stood in front of the painting, even in the absence of eyes, the youngsoldier's soul that the professor cultivated through a life-long labor gripped these young men's peace-grown hearts in an instant.

"My boys, I'm so sorry. I could not make his eyes…" The white-haired professor apologized in a child-like remorse. "You see, I've been trying for decades…"

Just then, a student murmured as if he was talking to himself, "It was him. This man, I have seen…"

The professor suddenly grabbed the student's hands in eagerness.

"What did you say?"

"I lived in Topol' on the Volga River till three years old." Said the student, "Even before I had much memory as a child, I remembered this Chinese man's face…"

"For real? Young man, you are serious?" Professor Braginsky interrupted the student with unusual loud voice, and then lowered his head. "That's impossible… Wang Yao returned to his country sixty-six years ago… Even if the man you saw was indeed him, he would have been an old man…"

"I don't know that man's name." The student was confounded, "I was only three years old at that time. I don't remember under what situation had I met the man; however, I do remember the face." The student spoke firmly. "He was about this young, with such a face and expression, and he's Chinese. That's why I remembered him at such a young age." His voice was of unquestionable certainty that other people, even very perplexed, did not think he lied.

The professor looked as if a shooting star swept across those old eyes. The students noticed the his apparent agitation and politely excused themselves, and wished him to eventually complete the painting as to add splendor to the sixty-six years anniversary of victory.

When he was once again by himself, old Ivan Braginsky walked to the painting, trembling. His hands, coarse like pine barks, gently brushed over the young man's handsome face in the portrait like his dearest. A drop of tear glided down his wrinkled face, fell down to the white-horse pendant hanging on his chest—the one exactly the same as in the portrait.

"Yao, was that you?" The professor murmured in a dull voice, fixing his eyes on the shades below those brows. "Please forgive me. I never forget your eyes. I know how to paint them, but I could not. You know…when I've lived to this age, how could I believe such nonsense—that you didn't return home, that you lived on the Volga…and looked so young…..."

"Grandpa!" He didn't notice when his granddaughter Lyenochka stood beside him, and gently held his hands, "Grandpa, were you thinking of your Chinese comrade again? Let me and papa and mama go to Topol' with you. Maybe you could meet him."

As the train carrying the Branginsky family slowly drove away from Moscow, the old soldier and art professor told himself over and over: it's not a big loss if they couldn't find Wang Yao—after all, how could things like attaining one's youth forever even possible? He only wished to take a stroll down the village by the Volga, when he was still able to, and perhaps to find new inspirations. During the war, there were battles fought in Topol', too.

Ivan was preoccupied with the endless green field rushing by the window. Seventy years ago, in the difficult year of 1941, he and his dear comrades had fought along death to defend Moscow… After the war, he often wandered around in the field where Battle of Moscow had been fought, and made sketches. It didn't matter the amount of inspiration he got; what mattered was that he could once again walk upon the land where he and Wang Yao had fought shoulder to shoulder. Every inch of soil and every tree there remembered their youthful faces, along with every bit and piece of memory they shared together…

…Like the way he marched on towards Topol' on the Volga, in search of Wang Yao…

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><p>* Great Patriotic War: refers to the portion of WWII fought from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945 between Soviet and Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front.<p>

* Victory Day: celebrated every year on May 9 for the victory of defeating the invasion of Nazi Germany.


	2. The Encounter

**Ch 2 Encounter**

"The man singing must've been riding on a horse." Wang Yao slightly tilted his head, listening carefully to the vague singing voice coming through the white birch forest in a distance. "Perhaps from the cavalry."

"Why?" Stood beside him was Toris Lorinaitis, curiously looking at his friend's side face. Wang Yao's eyes were still staring at the distant forest. They saw the sunset ablazed like fire in the background of white birches, as if the entire autumn forest of swirling leaves had turned into a golden city. They wouldn't be surprised if a deity in full gold armors flew out of nowhere.

"A walking man could not have sung in such exuberance and melancholy. Only a rider could have a voice as expansive as the field itself."

Almost as to attest this young Chinese man's judgment, the singing voice mixed with clopping sound was approaching towards their infantry reconnaissance station. Out of the forest leaped out a vigorous figure. In the radiance of the autumn sunset, the rider and his horse were as if gold-casted. In a moment, Wang Yao thought that, perhaps, the rider did not really belong to this time of gunpowder and smoke, but befallen from the sky, riding across this glorious and melancholic field of Moscow suburb, just to sing a song…

Following the path treaded by soldiers' boots and military trucks, the golden rider came in front of them. His spur rang in high spirit. He casually wrapped the rein around the white birch tree next to him before striding towards the bomb shelter.

Cavalry soldier Ivan Braginsky was soon to enter the twentieth year of his life, in the difficult autumn of 1941 when Nazi Germany started an overwhelming offensive towards Moscow. At that time, neither side had seized complete control over the outskirt of Moscow; only autumn, commanding a troop of withered grass, yellow leaves and departing cranes, had taken over this vast field like heavenly-sent.

When Ivan came out from the bunker, he saw two soldiers from the infantry standing beside his white horse. The young man leaning against the white birch had flaxen hair and eyes as blue as the Baltic Sea, tenderly looking at his friend—a black-haired young man of eighteen-years of age at most. Compared to the angular facial structure typical to Caucasians, that Oriental face was giving out a gentle but powerful impression. His right hand was gently caressing the mane of the white horse, left hand fondly rubbing its nose, while he talked to the horse in low voice.

"He must know horses." Ivan thought, "Look at that tenderness of him! This guy could make a great model for a portrait. I really should make one if time allows." Without realizing, Ivan already took out his hands and moved in the air, drawing on an imaginary easel. "He's not tall; slim but solidly-built. With that lovely face, it all seems so fitting. The most surprising are his eyes…so deep and mysterious. To say that the entire universe has sinking into that pair of dark pupils is not an overstatement…"

"I see that you like Kostya." Ivan went up, patted the horse's back and smiled at the black-haired young man. The bright smile like an autumn day made his handsome face glowing with radiance. "And Kostya likes you too. He has a fierce temper. He wouldn't just let any stranger pet him."

Wang Yao scratched his black hair, exchanged a glance first with Toris standing by the tree, then with Ivan—three pairs of eyes all filled with smiles. Then he opened his mouth with a foreign accent, "Now that we have known each other…"

"'We—does that include me?" said Ivan, as if there was a happy sparkle hopping from one eye to the other, "I suppose you ride very well?"

A mocking voice jumped in before Wang Yao could reply, "What do you think? Comrade, I'm afraid that tiny little body would have fallen to the ground before he even climbed on the horseback."

Ivan did not like that staggering squad leader at first sight—from the mockery to the nonchalant attitude. Wang Yao's face blushed a little, but his friend Toris couldn't help but to speak up. "Sir, how could you say that to our unit's best scout…"

"The best scout? A Chinese? They say the Chinese doesn't like to fight." The squad leader spread his hands, shook his head and provocatively pushed Wang Yao's shoulder, "Otherwise, they wouldn't be so beaten up by the Japanese…"

The unexpected happened. The black-haired guy went up holding the squad leader's arm, the right hand grabbing his shoulder, and with both arms exerting towards one side of his body, the big guy was thrown over to the ground and rolling to the sand on the roadside, almost got himself trampled by a group of cavalry riders. The comical scene filled them with rapture. They caught the opportunity and all had a good laugh.

The squad leader got up in exasperation, was about to flip before he caught a glimpse of the company commander who came out of the bunker to welcome the riders, and then refrained his temper. "You are really a piece of work. Let's wait and see." He stumbled away.

"Sir, you should remember," Wang Yao's previous tender look had turned into steel, and before realizing, had started speaking in Chinese, "Chinese does not like to fight; but if someone dared to provoke…"

"He's really something. A true scout and a soldier!" Ivan didn't understand what Wang Yao had just said, but he looked at the young man with amaze and admiration, thinking to himself, "It seems that I was right. This guy is going to be a terrific model. A lovely face and figure is not enough for a painting's subject; but, a gentle heart and strong mind combined perfectly within him, manifested so implicitly. Wonderful…"

With a young man's naïve pride, he was pleased with himself on the insight in both art and friend-making. Ivan raised his eyes jovially, glancing at a crowd of white cranes heading south in the depth of sky. They spread their beautiful wings, leaving their distant songs to this vast piece of land outside of Moscow.


	3. A Dream

**Ch 3 A Dream**

Feiyun's mane was snowy white, as the snowcap on Changbai Mountains.

Feiyun's eyes were charcoal black, as the soil on the Songhua River bank.

Feiyun's blood was scarlet red, as the blood roaring inside father's chest.

Wang Yao had never seen the Changbai Mountain or the Songhua River; but in those dreams the mountain howled and the river roared, because his mother told him that father was leading the troop there fighting the Japanese. His mother always lighted a lamp with him at night to read those last words his father wrote. Wang Yao didn't see how his father died; but in those dreams his father's blood was surging.

He saw, on the bank of Yellow River, the wind blowing tenderly and fragile irises swaying. He saw Feiyun's swift body like a cloud in the sky, those eyes like two shining stars. Father gave Feiyun to him before leaving home when Feiyun was still a little horse and him, still a little boy. He grew up with Feiyun in difficult times, like those resilient irises on the river bank.

The snowy white mane was splashed with hot blood when the bombers flew over their head, taking the life of that majestic horse. In a moment, Wang Yao thought it was his father's blood he saw in those dreams, flowing on top of the snowy mountain.

He casted his tearful eyes towards the sky of his suffering motherland—there, in the sunset faraway of the northwestern sky, he saw a heroic golden rider on top of Feiyun, rushing across the sky. The rider had silver color hair, violet eyes, and a warm smile like sunflowers…

"You finally wake up." A gentle voice pulled him out of his nightmare.

He opened his eyes and heard a collective noise of snoring from his fellow soldiers. A small lamp was swaying at the door of their bunker room. He saw Toris' concerned face; that pair of blue eyes like the Baltic Sea was full of sympathy. "You cried. A dream?"

Wang Yao nodded and quickly wiped away the tears from his eyelashes. Toris patted his friend on the shoulder understandingly—people like them who left their home behind for war didn't need to say much to know each other's mind. Even Toris himself often dreamt of returning to his Baltic homeland.

Wang Yao got up, put on his uniform coat and walked out of the bunker. Faraway, at the sunrise of some lime color clouds shined a lone star. He followed the beaten path of their camp base, walking slowly. Inside a puddle of water, you could see some small bubbles beneath the thin layer of ice, and sometimes, in these bubbles, there would be a piece of purple or yellow poplar leaf or white birch leaf. Wang Yao would always break the thin ice and took the frozen leaves back to their bunker room. It didn't take long before they accumulated to a small pile on the desk, emitting a wine-like aroma.

He saw the cavalry rider Ivan Braginsky whom he just met yesterday sitting under a tree, drawing something in the dim light. Wang Yao was always good at memorizing people's faces, especially someone like Ivan. That silver hair, violet eyes and warm sunflower smiles contained a magical power that once you caught a glimpse of it would never forget.

"I'm sorry to interrupt you," said Wang Yao. "But it's still pretty dark around. Don't you worry that your eyes will go bad?"

For some reason, at the thought of those bright eyes could possibly be wearing thick glasses made him feel pitiful.

"It's you, Wang." Ivan raised his head and blinked his eyes, "Don't forget who I am. The eyes of a scout love dark nights. They won't go bad."

"Why don't you draw during the day? It could get a bit busy with all the campaigns, but it won't leave you with no free time at all."

"Dawn always inspires me." Ivan smiled and waved the small piece of paper in his hand. "Before the war, I studied in the art academy. Since then, I always loved to get up in the break of the day to draw…"

Wang Yao took the drawing from him; under the dim light of early morning, he saw a handsome horse drawn in pencil. "That's nice. He even went to university before the war!" He was fondly looking at the drawing and couldn't put it down, thinking to himself, "What a great work…Maybe he was drawing his Kostya; or perhaps, he was drawing Feiyun that he never met…"

Ivan could almost read his mind. "You didn't answer my question during the day. You must ride very well? Maybe you owned a nice horse, too?"

A sentiment intertwined with tenderness and sorrow suddenly seized him. Before he knew, he started talking like an old friend with a rider whom he barely knew for a day, about his Feiyun and about himself. Many years later, Professor Braginsky still clearly remembered everything Wang Yao told him. As the son of a hero fighting against the Japanese, at the age of fifteen, Wang Yao wanted to continue the fighting in where his father died; however, the government decided to send him to study in the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1941, he graduated from high school and was just about to apply for Moscow University before the war broke out. Wang Yao went to the conscription office in the same day, but people there advised him to come back later, as he was still four months short before reaching the age of eighteen years. Under the insistence of this stubborn foreign boy, however, they eventually agreed.

After a short training session, Wang Yao was sent to the infantry reconnaissance squad. He got along well with everyone; his best friend was a Lithuanian, Toris Lorinaitis. Wang Yao was close to him partly because of the guy's soft-spoken temperament, partly because that he was studying in Moscow University where Wang Yao had longed for, and partly because they were the only two foreigners among the squad filled with Moscow locals.

"I should go back to our squad, Ivan." Wang Yao heard the bustling noises from their campsite. As their conversation went on, they started addressing each other with first names and with the casual form of "you".

"Yao!" Ivan called him, "Would you tell me why you collect those leaves?" as he curiously pointing to the frozen Topol' and birch leaves Wang Yao had taken out from under the ice.

"Because I've always wanted to be a biologist, my dear artist!" Wang Yao smiled and strode away.

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><p>*Changbai Mountain: A major mountain located in the Northeast of China bordering North Korea.<p>

*Songhua River: Located in the Northeast of China

*Feiyun: translates to "Flying cloud"


	4. Defending A Stranger

**Ch 4 Defending A Stranger**

It was raining the whole day till evening when they returned to their campsite from the front. The setting sun finally revealed itself in the same old spot behind the white birch forest.

It was October 19, 1941. In the outskirt of Moscow, armies at the Vyazma front as well as Bryansk front were surrounded by German army and suffered tremendous losses. The Mozhaysk front where Wang Yao's unit was at became a major viable force in that period of time.

Continuous raining brought waves of cold air. Dusty roads to the front had become incredibly muddy and almost completely paralyzed the German tanks, forcing them to stop the offence on all fronts. This gained precious times for the Soviet army. The cavalry where Ivan belonged to had made full use of their unique advantage. They rode back and forth on the roads where tanks could hardly move on, stabbing into German army's rear area from time to time, attacking their supply lines.

The infantry reconnaissance boys, however, could only rely on their two legs; sometimes on all four to climb through the battle line. This October, they dug many tombs in the muddy field of Moscow for the soldiers who sacrificed their lives. One of the squad's nurses, a sweet girl with curly hair, was shot on the temple by shell splinter from a sudden bombing attack. Soldiers put a few more bunches of wild flowers in front of her tomb. She was a girl after all.

"I heard they will send us new nurse in a day or two." As soldiers gathered together around the campfire, a blond young man said, "It's directly sent from Moscow!"

Everybody started chatting.

"I heard there were a few German bombers took off to Moscow the other day."

"My family is from Moscow. My mom wrote that the neighbor's kid was killed from the bombing!"

"Those barbarians! What the hell are the artilleries doing?"

"They are working pretty hard already. Those bombers were lucky and got away."

"We can ask the new nurse about things in the city…"

"You think the nurses would care about those things? My dear?" A harsh voice rose up from the crowd. It was the squad leader who provoked Wang Yao the other day—Kulikov. When soldiers just got back to the camp base, completely drained and exhausted, he, however, looked as if having well rested for a long time. This unpopular guy turned the pipe in his hand, waggling his head, "They are just some silly girls with nothing but pretty dresses and dolls in their mind. Guys, women are good for nothing. The battlefield depends on us men."

"You should respect the ladies, sir." Wang Yao couldn't help but to barge in. "Many of us were saved by them! They could've stay at the back, wearing their pretty dresses…"

Kulikov glared at him with irresistible distaste and continued, "They are just a bunch of silly girls day-dreaming of adventure! The men all went to the army and they get bored at the back. You wait and see. Once they get to the front, they'll start screwing around with our soldiers. Let's take that Natasha we met in Moscow reorganization for an example. Don't let that cold poker face fool ya. She probably got a dozen boyfriends at her disposal…"

"Natasha is not that kind of girl! Please take back your word, sir!"

Everyone's eyes were on Toris. He blushed, fists clenched and those previously tender-looking eyes were now full of anger. This quiet Lithuanian young man never got into an argument with anyone, as they could recall.

"Folks! Our little Toris is in love! He's in love with a freaking queen!" Kulikov yelled jauntily and grabbed Toris' collar, "She got so many fellas! How could she remember you little puppy dog! Would you like a kiss or a trip to her bed…"

Kulikov couldn't finish the sentence before a forceful blow from the left smashed right into him. "Very well." He wiped his bleeding nose and returned the "favor" back onto Toris' face. Soon, the two tussled into a dogfight in the dirty mud road.

"Damn it! I want you to apologize to her!"

The soldiers cheered and shouted, trying to separate them. The two wrestled with no mercy, as if the other one was a Nazi German in bayonet combat.

The grave voice of the company commander ended the whole chaos.

"Get up! Well done, both of you! The Germans didn't kill you so you decide to fight each other! Kulikov and Lorinaitis, three days confinement for each of you."

"Lorinaiti started it." said the squad leader with his head kept low.

"But sir, Kulikov provoked him first…" everybody all started talking at once.

"You all shut your mouths. We will investigate into it. Unfortunately, the division commander came here today for inspection and then saw your childish act." The company commander raised his face pointing to the other way where a high rank officer stood in a distance. "Shame for the entire unit! You two better prepare yourself. You might end up in the military court in a few days."

The two men with bruised noses and swollen faces exchanged furious glances, and then followed the company commander walking away without a word. Wang Yao watched his friend with apprehension. He knew about this shy and proud young man. Would Toris tell them that what he did was for a girl whom he met only for a few times?

At the thought of this girl Natasha, Wang Yao had to admit that Toris had good taste. Several months ago when they were still as new recruits reorganizing in Moscow, they were located next to the nurse class. Among all the girls, Natasha was especially outstanding. She was very beautiful, with a bow neatly tied onto her light blond hair. In front of hordes of her pursuers, she always put on a cold aloof face. The soldiers gave her a nickname "Queen of Spade".

It seemed that squad leader Kulikov was among the pursuers.

"Sasha!" Wang Yao called on to a soldier, "Do you want to go with me as Toris' witness?"

Three days later, Wang Yao met Toris who just came out of the confinement. Thanks to Wang Yao and Sasha's testimony, Toris was released from the investigation after only a reprimand. The squad leader Kulikov, however, was found to have been consistently leaving early from duty (such as the day of the fight), and was sent away for penalty.

"Why do you still look so beat-up?" Wang Yao didn't know if he should laugh.

Toris smiled shyly, "Kulikov really got me. The doctor said the swelling will go down in a week."

"Gosh!" Wang Yao sighed, half-worriedly, half-jokingly, "If it wasn't me and Sasha who went to explain for you, you would be the one sent off for penalty. You fool! Why didn't you say something? You just sat there listening to Kulikov fabricating story out of thin air!"

"I didn't want to drag her into this…" His bruised face blushed a little, looking particularly comical. "If people knew she was the cause of the fight, I don't know how far they would stretch the story…"

"Well, if Natasha knows, maybe she would be touched."

"I don't expect her to know… I didn't even speak to her before, and I don't know where she would be assigned to. Maybe I will never see her but…I just want to do something for her, even if she never knows."

They were soon in front of the bunker. Wang Yao halted his steps and tried his best not to laugh. "Judging from that 'handsome' look of yours, you'd better not go in there…..."

"But I want to have a rest." The poor guy who was still immersed in his own infatuation didn't give much thought, went ahead and lift the curtain.

What awaited him inside was total silence, followed by an explosion of laughter, clapping and whistling. A pretty girl with a bow tied to her blonde hair was curiously looking at him up and down, especially that beat-up face not yet achieved full recovery and that dirty ripped coat covered in mud from the fight three days ago.

"Our knight return in full glory! He returned for his queen!" A soldier gloated, "Hey Toris! Where's that hand-kissing to our new nurse Natasha!"

Toris' voice of despair entered into Wang Yao's ears. "Perhaps I'd be better off getting a few more punches from Kulikov…..."

"I think so, too." Wang Yao's face lightened up to a witty grin. "But you never listen to me."

* * *

><p>-TBC<p> 


	5. A Break In November

**Ch 5 A Break In November**

A pair of sparkly clean riding boots stepped on the sidewalk in jolly spirits. Ivan Braginsky didn't look at the road but was always able to avoid all the water puddles. His callous fingertips skimmed through the top brim of the fences on the sidewalk and his snowy white scarf, like a float of cloud, merrily drifting up and down behind him. All the girls on the street couldn't help but to stop their steps and give a second look at this handsome young soldier.

As a young man unaware of his own vanity, Ivan knew he was easily eye-catching—even when he ran on two feet, he ran in the same manner as he rode his horse, graciously and effortlessly. But this time, he left Kostya at his station, since he was inside the city of Moscow, not on the field of Mozhaysk. At the end of October, as fresh troops filled into the area, the Supreme Headquarter started transferring back some troops from the front to rest and reorganize. Ivan's cavalry and Wang Yao's infantry units were among them.

This was definitely what Ivan had hoped for. Days of exhaustion from non-stop missions allowed him to do nothing but to bury himself under the cover at the end of the day. Natasha wrote him three letters in ten days, complaining in her typical tone—sweet, whiny but proud nonetheless—of why he didn't come to the nearby infantry station to visit her where she just started there as an army nurse; but, he really didn't have enough energy togrant wishes to his spoiled little sister.

What made things all the more delightful was that, even when they were transferred back to Moscow, the two units were still fairly close together, especially that the company commander handed him the liaison work between the two units. "You can drop by and visit your sister, but don't take too long."

Without violating the rules, Ivan stretched the time spent there by a little bit every time, even when Natasha couldn't spare the time to come out to see him. Perhaps, he didn't realize that Natasha wasn't the only one on his mind.

"Ivan, next time when you visit, can you ride Feiyun…I mean, Kostya?"

It was another evening when Ivan visited the infantry unit. After all the work was done, on the way out, Wang Yao walked with him towards the nearby central park—a route Ivan must take when going back to the cavalry unit—and made his long-concealed request.

It was early November of Moscow, the autumn had ridden on the back of white cranes' wings and escaped to the south, leaving the winter general to march on streets, allowing no one to interrupt his meditation.

"Ah! So deep inside, your friend can't even compare to a little white horse. I'm so sad." Ivan joked in his unique innocent voice.

Wang Yao smiled awkwardly. "I'm very sorry…" When it came to conversing, he was always cautious and reserved. He knew that Ivan could not ride inside the city, but ever since that unforgettable evening when they first met, he never saw that great horse again—the one that reminded him of his beautiful Feiyun…

In previous reunions, Ivan didn't ignore the slight disappointment contained in those otherwise joyful eyes. Being a outgoing and cheerful spirit all his life and never thinking twice before speaking, for the first time in his life, he started to think over whether he was joking or was he truly sad. The thought of himself being unreasonably jealous of his best buddy Kostya made him a bit gloomy inside.

He was naturally a proud young man. He loved to gallop down a wild field on his horse, sing a hearty song out loud, show his paintings around to everybody meanwhile, in a child-like innocence, showing people that what he did was not out of pompous intention. It was merely out of a young man's careless pursuit of loose hobbies; but also did he know, by heart, that doing the sort of things that he was good at always drew people's respect and admiration. He wanted people to like him out of his charisma, not his belongings—such as Kostya.

What about this foreign friend that he just came to know? Wang Yao could count as a handsome young man, but Ivan believed that if they were to stand together in front of all the girls of Moscow, more than half would pick the magnificent cavalry rider Vanya. Certainly, in terms of charm and appeals, air force beat navy, and navy beat the land force; however, if you were to choose only from the land force, a cavalry rider looked cooler than an infantry soldier. More importantly, it was also because Wang Yao was less of a showy character; his reticent and introverted temperament did not draw attentions. What did his fellow soldiers say about him? "Assault or scouting, you would always want to be with him."

In the battlefield, this was the highest opinion a person could get.

To ease Wang Yao's apparent embarrassment, Ivan hugged him jokingly, and as expected, that uneasy expression was caught in his eyes again.

"Hmm…in my country, we have a saying 'do as the locals do'. But all your huggings and kissings…I still can't get used to it."

"Indeed! The folks from your unit described you to me exactly like that!" Ivan giggled and mentioned some funny stories Wang Yao did in the infantry. As expected, he saw the black-haired young man blushed again.

"How did you know all those things about me?"

"When Ivan wants to know, there's nothing that he can't find." Ivan grinned like a child succeeded in his little prank. "Chinese don't like jokes?"

"We like jokes, but things like hugging and kissing…well, back home, it's only between the closest…"

Wang Yao couldn't imagine how awkward the whole conversation would get into if it wasn't when, in a distance, a passionate and somehow desperate voice attracted their attention.

"Natasha…Natashenka. Please listen to me."

* * *

><p>*Vanya: diminutive form of "Ivan"<p>

*Natashenka: diminutive form of "Natasha"


	6. Under The Pushkin Statue

**Ch 6 Under the Pushkin Statue**

Wang Yao put his finger by his mouth as to let them be quiet and Ivan blinked his eyes understandingly. The two people then ducked behind a Pushkin* bronze statue—they chose this incredible look-out spot almost out of a scout's very instinct. From here, the dusk cloud rained down from the end of sky like a flaming water fall, lining Toris and Natasha with golden coronets, whilst Ivan and Wang Yao were neatly hidden under the statue's gigantic shadow.

"But I must tell you today, Natashenka. I like you…since my very first sight of you…"

"I like you, too." answered Natasha in her cold and reserved voice, like a cloud of moving cold air of November that caught your forehead beneath the ushanka* off guard. "My brother told me that in our unit, he likes Wang the most, then, you. People that brother likes, I like them too."

Wang Yao almost laughed out loud. Was it because of Natasha's childish yet amusing words, or because of the complacency from his important place in his friend's heart? He didn't really know. But in a flash, he thought he saw the corner of Ivan's mouth slightly raised in a mischievous manner.

"Natashenka, please listen to me. There are many ways of liking…not only the likings between comrades, but also between people who are closer…" Toris explained desperately in his Lithuanian-accent Russian, "Like between Romeo and Juliet*, Insaroff and Elena*, Arthur and Jemma*…"

What a Romeo! Wang Yao didn't know if he should laugh or feel sorry for the fellow. Then he heard Natasha talking, "If I were Juliet, then my Romeo shall be such a person, simply speaking, just like my brother."

It was so! Wang Yao suddenly felt a slight bitterness inside. He had always known that Ivan was more appealing to girls than himself or Toris. Their courage or looks were no less than Ivan's, but speaking of personality, this cavalry rider was obviously full of splendor. In comparison, a person like him was "reticent" and "composed" if one calls it nicely; or, bluntly speaking, boring and ordinary.

He saw Toris grabbed Natasha's hands. In the dusk of alternating dark-gold and lavender colors, the Lithuanian young man's two long arms were shaking from uncontrollable emotions.

"Natasha! No matter what you think, but if I was Romeo, then my Juliet, I could only wish that she was…"

He swallowed the rest of the sentence. If it was an ordinary person hiding behind the statue, he would only see a pair of young lovers holding hands and exchanging sweet gazes. But the eyes of a scout, accustomed to dark light, told Wang Yao that, at the moment, Natasha's small hands locked those fingers like pliers.

Ivan burst out a low pitch of giggling but was covered by a painful cry from Toris. Wang Yao couldn't imagine a seemingly slender girl like her would have such a strong grip, especially the person she gripped was an experienced soldier. When he started to wonder if his friend's fingers already snapped and broken, Natasha finally released him. Toris kept rubbing his two hands back and forth in his palms.

"Comrade Lorinaitis," her cold voice seemed to contain a hint of sneering. "Don't fight with people for me in the future. You see, I'm strong enough to handle anyone who doesn't behave themselves."

She picked up the lower hem of her army coat, bent her knees and bowed, as if she was on the stage at a curtain fall; then, turned around graciously as all the beautiful girls fully aware of their charms, with her head up high, walking back towards the gate of their military post.

Toris stood alone under the dim glow of the setting sun, murmured with full affection and gloom, towards Natasha's proud figure. "Natashenka…I knew it. But I have told you everything…"

Wang Yao's eyes followed Toris as he walked away. A strong feeling of empathy suddenly rendered him breathless and he promptly stepped out of the giant shadow. Ivan followed.

"Our girl Natashenka was so spoiled." Ivan gloated, "She was the youngest. We always give in to her when it comes to, well, everything."

"Ivan, talk some sense into Natasha." Wang Yao raised his head, looking at him. "You know Toris is a great guy. He can certainly match your sister."

"Love can't be forced." Ivan said in a jokingly but firm voice. "Let her give Toris a hard time. If he wants her heart, then he has to put in some effort."

This pair of siblings really loved teasing! Wang Yao sighed. He once heard that this cavalry soldier had a nickname called Ivan the Devil. "Those German devils don't expect to survive if they meet me"—was how he laughed and explained where it came from. Seeing that triumphing expression on his face as if he just witnessed a successful prank, Wang Yao had to admit that the Devil was still a devil in his spare time.

"But this is not fair to Toris." Wang Yao sighed, "Except friends from the army, he's almost completely alone…" The two foreigners once exchanged the stories of their pasts. Toris became an orphan when he was only ten years old. Fortunately, friends of his deceased parents—a Polish family—adopted him. The family had a young boy around his age, Felix, whose whimsical and optimistic spirit had always warmed little Toris' heart. In August 1939, Felix and his family went back to Poland to visit their relatives; a month later, Germany invaded Warsaw…Toris who stayed in Lithuania by himself entered Moscow University in the following year. Whenever his classmates tried to comfort him that they could probably see each other at the end of the war, Toris replied in his tender and mournful voice, "Felix's families are all Jewish."

Ivan's somber voice cut into Wang Yao's deep thought.

"Don't you also have no one to turn to in Moscow?"

"But I haven't fallen in love with someone in Moscow." Wang Yao lowered his long eyelashes. Those dark pupils were like a pair of deep lake water, hidden behind tree shadows. "Toris loved and he feels the misery. I just wish that my friend could have happiness in this difficult time…"

"You're always like this, Yao!" Ivan spoke fervently, "You always think for others! But a man must depend on himself, no matter outward to the battlefield or inward to his own feelings…Your friends and families are thousands of miles away; and us, near at hand but…"

Wang Yao patted his hand sympathetically and felt his hands were seized by the tall man in a tight grip. No more words needed, he knew where Ivan's mind was at! He knew that the Braginsky family lived in Bereza village where it was under German occupation over a month now. Except his little sister Natasha and his big sister Tonya who worked as a nurse in Moscow military hospital, everybody including his parents were trapped in his hometown and their safety unknown.

"When the cavalries were scouting into their deep rear, how I wished they sent me to Bereza!" Ivan took a deep breath, almost as if to escape an invisible claw clenching on his neck, and his left hand grabbed his own collar. "Just to know if my papa and mama were still alive…"

Wang Yao placed his other hand on top of Ivan's left hand and gently pulled it away from the collar. He didn't think this gesture contain any intimate meaning, but was simply unable to bear the sight of Ivan's tight grip—a gesture out of kindness like he always did to his fellow soldiers.

"Don't be." He said it solemnly, "Don't you always smile?"

Ivan quickly wiped his eyes and a smile once again appeared on the corner of his mouth. He hugged Wang Yao tightly and, like to a comrade and a brother, placed a solid kiss on his cheek. Wang Yao didn't have any reaction of uneasiness—people like them, away from their family, were each other's family in these difficult years.

"My friend! When I saw you for the first time, I had wanted to make you a portrait…When the time frees up, would you please allow me to?"

"Yes. Now, you should go." Wang Yao lowered his voice, "Any time later and you will be punished."

The thick darkness stood above Moscow. This beautiful city was deprived of its usual light blazing night scene. Every window was covered with heavy curtain. The German army was located only tens of kilometers away west of the suburb and the jets marked with iron cross would trace with any small amount of light and raid the city. Moscow was under black-out…

"When I studied in the academy before the war, I could never see enough of Moscow." Ivan released Wang Yao from his embrace, but didn't immediately head to leave. "Sometimes at night, I lied in bed and would wonder if it was all a dream or was it real? Then I pulled up the curtain and saw outside the brilliant golden lights everywhere. I told myself it was all real. But, now…"

"One day, Moscow will light up again to celebrate peace and victory. You really need to go now…"

In the darkness, they didn't try to recognize each other's faces again, but only gripped each others' hands as to ensure their presence. The bronze statue of Pushkin erected behind them majestically; the wise eyes of the poet looked beyond the turbulent darkness of November's night, onto the brightly-lit spring faraway.

* * *

><p>*Pushkin: Alexander Pushkin, one of the greatest Russian poets<p>

*Ushanka: A Russian fur hat with earflap

*Romeo and Juliet: Lovers in William Shakespeare's play

*Insaroff and Elena: Lovers in the novel "On the Eve" by Ivan Turgenev

*Arthur and Jemma: Lovers in the novel "Gadfly" by Ethel Lilian Voynich


	7. Breakfast

**Ch 7 Breakfast**

For the entire night, the horizon was covered with thundering sounds—artilleries, gunfires, footsteps cracking on the snow and the battle cry of "Ura"*—seemingly to have turn the ground upside down.

When the troop finally risked their lives and rushed out of layers of the German army's surrounding, the sky was already light up like the wounded soldiers' pale faces and the sunrise was glowing like blood.

After two hours, the breakthrough force returned to their division's base and was ordered to rest there—all personels from the breakthrough force would be stationed here and turned into defence.

Forty-three deaths, seventeen injuries and ten missing—were the new stats updated on the infantry's name list in the morning of November 17. Their unit had already suffered severe loss in the previous campaign and was just able to recruit back to the one-hundred man establishment in Moscow…

Logistic soldiers were busy tending soup and vegetables as well as vodka; the latter was limited to one hundred grams per person. Wang Yao sat on the ground, exhausted, leaning against Toris while letting his friend's worried voice drifting in and out of his ears, "Poor gals! They just got through the line with us, but couldn't have a rest…"

He saw Natasha in the distance taking care of injured soldiers. She put her gloves aside and her small hands—red from the cold air—quickly rolling up bandages on the wound. A proud girl like her would never abandon her faithful duty for a few minutes' rest. All of a sudden, the girl's outcry of surprise and joy mixed with the sound of approaching clops entered his ears—Ivan, riding on his steed Kostya, was rushing towards them; behind him was a few more dozens of soldiers and horses.

In an instant, Wang Yao felt that his energy that was drained from days of battle came back to him. He jumped up from the ground, causing Toris behind him to almost lose his balance.

The cavalry units had broken through too! Among the soldiers alive was his good friend Ivan Braginsky!

Time on the battlefield—sometimes it flied like a bullet past the tip of your hair; sometimes it stumbled like the army cook carrying the water buckets across the campground.

It was a hundred kilometers away from the Pushkin bronze statue in the city park and two weeks already from that memorable afternoon under it. But, to eighteen-year-old Wang Yao, it was as if a lifetime had already gone by.

After the Red Square march on November 7, 1941, which was later foreverly remembered in the book of history, their unit was reorganized into the west line along with the cavalry unit, heading back to the front. What awaited them was the German army—also freshly rested and reinforced, vowed to take down Moscow. The two units were fighting all along. Their major role was to sneak into the enemy's rear for reconnaissance missions instead of facing the frontal battlefield like the rest of the infantry and cavalry; however, sometimes, war did not play the card one expected…During the campaign before the reorganization in Moscow, Wang Yao had done killing, but merely through long range shooting. Only in this difficult November had he tasted the brutalness of plain bayonet fighting, especially the previous night when they were surrounded and divided by enemies several folds of their number!

"Aha! You are still alive." After easing his sister who cried out of joy, Ivan came up to Wang Yao. He still retained that carefree joking tone, even just after a brutal battle. The optimism was clearly contagious and WangYao picked up his way of speaking.

"Didn't you say that you want to draw me a portrait? Let's see how you're gonna draw if I die."

"If you died, I can still draw your face." said Ivan like an unscrupulous child. "I was number one in the academy before the war. I can make portraits straight out of my memory…This look of yours, I won't be able to forget no matter how many years had past!"

The last sentence, at first, satisfied Wang Yao's vain little heart, but soon he revoked that idea and laughed at himself: perhaps Ivan just used the opportunity to show off his incredible memory and skills. "Look at this guy," thought to himself, "Like me, he also joint the army this summer, but that casual way of talking about death is way better than me. They say that he already fought with bayonet back in September, and that was when he was all by himself deep inside the enemy's region…"

Recalling only a few hours ago how he stabbed the bayonet into an enemy's chest for the first time, that face-to-face hatred and the lingering smell of blood, Wang Yao couldn't help but to sympathize Ivan, although he quickly realized this thought to be bizarre and laughable.

The base was bustling with increasing noise and energy—the logistic soldiers were serving hot soup and vegetables, though they weren't the most important. The loveliest thing was the one hundred grams ration of vodka.

"Take mine." Wang Yao looked at his portion of vodka and said to Ivan. "I don't drink."

"You don't drink?" Ivan looked at him unbelievably, "Then how about the vodka you got before?"

"People who can't survive without vodka? We've got more than we need in the trench." Wang Yao raised his chin to his fellow soldiers who were enjoying their first meal after the brutal victory in high spirits. "Giving it to someone else is better than wasting on a person who doesn't know about drinking, like me."

Ivan shook his head in disapproval. "That's not good! Yao, from today on, save the vodka for yourself. It's not to fix the craving. When you fight in the ice and snow, if you don't drink you'll freeze. It's not like you don't how cold our winter is." He pat on Wang Yao's shoulder heavily.

Wang Yao looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then put on a face like staring death right in the eyes and pour that vodka down his throat…

"You fool! You'll get choked! Wanna be like an old soak at your first time, huh?" Ivan tried very hard to hold back the laughing and pat his back in a good rhythm. After a few seconds, Wang Yao finally caught a breath. Due to alcohol and shyness, his pale face was flushing with a rosy color. To hide his embarrassement, he diverted his sight to the soldiers talking and laughing nearby.

The time of war taught people so many things. Even if you just lost your buddy who went through life and death together, you shouldn't hold on to that anguish for too long, but only to bury it deep inside until the day of revenge.

"Where's your vodka? Wang?" A cheerful old soldier yelled to Wang Yao.

"That's a pity!" Before he could open his mouth, Ivan answered for him with a grin, "From now on, comrade Wang will take up drinking."

Soldiers were all stirred up—some regretted about the extra vodka, some took the high ground as experienced soldiers and congratulated Wang Yao about his drinking as he "finally became a competent soldier". Others were teasing the logistic soldiers of whether they scrimped today's buckwheat soup. The logistic people kept nagging and hurried them to eat, or else they were getting on that bad-tempered supply chief's nerves again.

"It's about time to get rid of that cranky old guy!" someone yelled, "Let our Toris be the supply chief! My lord, he knows how to take care of ya! If he handled the supplies, he'll get us all fattened up!"

"Under the caring of our dear Chief Toris, the one getting fatten up the most will sure be our dear Natasha!"

Among the laughters, only the two persons involved in the joke were not responding. Natasha who was so faithful with her duties was busy tending injuries over there. It was hard to say if she heard—even if she did, she would turn a deaf ear to it. The concentrating expression on that beautiful face made her even more enchanting—almost like an angel in Toris' eyes, whom were staring at her out of his mind that even spilled soup on his boots didn't take his notice.

"What should I do with you?" said Wang Yao, who was looking at Toris with amusement and pity. His face still blushed from the vodka. "You are pretty smart most of the time, but in front of Natasha, nobody beats you in a stupid contest."

Sitting beside him, Ivan's violet eyes were not looking at his sister, Toris, or any other people on the campground. Right here at this moment, there was nothing that could be more captivating to the heart of the young artist—self-proclaimed at least—than Wang Yao's handsome face which was made even the more elegant by the blushing and the warmth expressed towads his friend.

"How beautiful..." thought Ivan. "I must draw him a portrait, as we will be resting in this campground for a few more days…"

Many years later, every student Professor Braginsky had taught all remembered their teacher's word in the portrait class: "If there was such a person that inspires you to make a portrait and your heart hang on to that unforgettable urge, then cherish every moment you spent with that person! Young men!"

* * *

><p>*Ura: Battle cry similar to "Hooray"<p> 


	8. A Cold Winter

**Ch 8 A Cold Winter**

The winter of 1941 was particularly cold, even by Russian standard. In front of the merciless law of nature, animals and birds utilized all sorts of methods to their advantage in order to avoid the distressing winter—either flying to the warm south or hiding in caves or underground.

What was left on this endless snowfield were the soldiers.

"Russia is big, but now we have nowhere to retreat. Behind us is Moscow!"

The division Wang Yao belonged to was guarding this road in Moscow suburb, to ensure that the crucial line of transportation wouldn't be compromised by the enemy. Every day at noon, military trucks carrying injuried soldiers and important materials would drive on this frozen road to Moscow. The canvas layed outside the truck flapped with the wind and were covered with frost and snow, reflecting a glow of rainbow colors under the pale afternoon sunlight.

Soldiers were rooted on this piece of land and became the souls of the soil. They breathed the air of the land and felt the warmth and mercy contained deep down under the icy cold exterior.

"We are close to the land because our hearts are like this piece of land: firm as steel in the extreme cold; however, deep inside the soil mainteined a power that bears everything that is beautiful and pure." Wang Yao wrote down on a small piece of paper.

The poplars and birchs had lost all the leaves by the end of Octorber. Wang Yao could no longer collect leaves in early morning like he did in Autumn. The bunker, however, did not lose the radiance. In the place of the pile of leaves rose a small sun.

That was a sunflower sitting in half a bottle of water. Previously, a nearby biology lab was bombed. Wang Yao stood at the ruins and felt incredibily sad—he had always wanted to be a biologist. In the wrecked incubation room covered with clutters and bomb shells, only a small flower still lived. Natasha held it in those girl hands and brought it back to the bunker. The little thing bloomed in spite of its season like a small flame.

Recently, everytime when Natasha came to the bunker, she would stop by the desk and a smile climbed to the corner of her mouth, appearing particularly adorable. Wang Yao also noticed with a biology-enthusiast's sensitivity, that the sunflower survived for so many days outside of the lab.

He soon discovered the secret of this magic. Toris loved this little flower and placed it in just the right distance from the heater so that it received enough warmth but not too much to be burned. More importantly, he found that Toris put his daily ration of sugar into the water. Wang Yao knew what it meant: sugar kept the flower longer…

Like all beautiful things that fleet at the blink of an eye, the flower couldn't bloom forever. When the the sunflower withered, Wang Yao found that Toris was already used to not eating sugar—he saved his rations in a little bag.

"Toris! Are you waiting for Natasha to bring new flowers?"

"You found out about it, huh? She would smile when she looked at the flower. How lovely…"

"So love is like this?" Wang Yao held his friend's shoulder and sighed, "To let you torture yourself like this?"

"Maybe she's a bit stuck-up or never say a kind word…but a girl who loves flowers in the middle of a war must be a good girl…"

Natasha. Those small hands could take care of wounded soldiers with great patience; or pick up a gun and break through the enemy's line with everyone else. Her hands could squeeze Toris' fingers without hesitate till they hurt, and they could also hold a small flower from the ruins with great tenderness. This splendid girl of tremendous beauty and peculiar remoteness—what a remarkable person! No wonder she was the sister of cavalry soldier Ivan Braginsky…

Somehow, Wang Yao's heart lightened up whenever he thought of the guy who always had a smile on his face. Whenver he got the time, Wang Yao couldn't help but to look over to the cavalry's side, searching for that brilliant white horse and that brilliant rider. At first, he felt uneasy about himself missing a person so much, but soon he found himself a good reason—that man had a horse exactly the same as his Feiyun; thus, his lingering mind could be explained.

Then he saw him…like that early morning in October when he was sketching under a tree. Kostya was in the barn gnawing on oats wholeheartedly. Wang Yao quickly walked up to him.

"Vanya!" Now he had already started addressing him like a close friend, "Where's that portrait you promised me?"

Ivan shook his head apologetically, "I can't make it."

"Why? Didn't you say that you can draw a person from sheer memory?"

"It's weird. It works on everybody except you. Just the other day when I tried to sketch you, I just couldn't catch that feel of it."

Wang Yao was suddenly in a lighthearted spirit. He sat down on the ground in front of Ivan and said like a cheerful little kid, "Well, I'm sitting right here. Come on, draw me!"

Ivan paused for a moment before his two hands attempted a start on paper; then he laughed.

"No, Yao! That's not the problem! I have said that I'll never be able to forget your face. But, thinking about drawing you out with my own two hands, especially that you are just next door somehow give me a strange feeling that interrupted my inspiration…Especially now that you're sitting right in front of me, I just can't do it …"

"Maybe one day when I was assigned to somewhere else, you would be able to!" A childish emotion of resentment all of a sudden covered over his heart. He reached out his hand to Ivan, "Let me see your sketches."

Ivan took out a small sack from his bag and handed over a fold of paper to him. Their daily ration contained paper for soldiers to roll cigarettes, but Ivan saved his for sketching.

In the pile of pencil sketches, there were soldiers from their cavalry unit, magnificent autumn field, solemn statue of Pushkin, military trucks leaving for Moscow…but most were horses. Beautiful white horse Kostya just like his Feiyun…

Suddenly a warmth rose up from his heart. "Vanya!" As he handed over the sketches to Ivan, Wang Yao couldn't resist the excitement. "Can you let me ride Kostya?"

Ivan nodded. Wang Yao pulled out that beautiful white horse and hopped onto the horseback in a swift and handsome gesture, then galloped away towards the barren woods in the distance.

* * *

><p>-TBC<p> 


	9. Around the Campfire

**Ch 9 Around the Campfire**

The head-on cold wind howling at his ears reminded him of the giant waves resounding in the Yellow River. The never-ending snowfield of this foreign land flying past the horseshoes suddenly turned into the iris-blooming Huangtu plateau*. Kostya's body was a piece of cloud in the sky and his eyes like two stars. It was not Kostya; it was his dear Feiyun, given to him by his father before leaving them behind. All his little friends envied him for that great horse and a hero father.

Trees blurred in his vision—perhaps from the hastily ride. A thin layer of tears masked his eyes—perhaps from the stiff wind…

Why? He had always had strong self-control and never shed a tear when he's awake!

Ivan poured deep and heavy emotions into those sketches that upon seeing them—as long as one's heart had't turned entirely numb and callous—would elicit an inexpressive tenderness and melancholy, as though recalling the memory of one's childhood that was never to return. It was in the depth of sky and in the breadth of earth, radiating luminance in the beginning of human experience. Their life ahead could be very difficult, requiring a great amount of resilience, and this kind of emotion would provide solace.

"Vanya, who are you? You make me laugh and you make me cry…"

He pulled up the horse, lowered his body and buried his face in Kostya's majestic mane. As a child, whenever he was sad but didn't want to worry his mom, he would snuggle up to Feiyun like he did now.

"Let's go back, Kostya!"

On the way back, his emotion still couldn't quiet down that when he dismounted the horse, he almost tripped. Ivan was quick and caught him, then pat on his hands like Wang Yao did the other day under the Pushkin statue.

"Don't…" Wang Yao blushed and quickly looked around. Everyone was enjoying the rare time of relaxation—playing accordions, telling jokes or smoking. Nobody noticed them. Then he quickly followed, "Thank you."

"You don't say anything but deep inside I understand you! You Chinese are always so reticent and mysterious." Ivan lowered his head to look at those dark around eyes like his horse. "Do you know that in 1934, a great artist* had an exhibition in Moscow? He was Chinese. Those horses he created were so wonderful!" His usual proud eyes revealed a rare admiration. "I was only thirteen back then. After the exhibition, I fell in love with drawing and horses…and you Chinese people."

He said the last part after some time of consideration and he didn't even know why he said it. Wang Yao probably considered it as one of many sweet rubbish Ivan talked, so he smiled and replied that Chinese girls were very pretty and maybe Ivan could find himself a suitable one.

As Ivan walked with Wang Yao back to the infantry's campground, he couldn't help but to enjoy the dark-haired young man's nimble footsteps. When they first came to know each other in October, Ivan had noticed that Wang Yao always walked in this jovial and careful manner. He picked the path already treaded by someone else, as if afraid of breaking a flower or a stalk. Like Ivan, he always saved the cigarette paper from his ration and jot down diary like a real phenologist*—which day the cranes migrated to the south, which day the leaves started falling in abundance and which day Moscow region had its first snowfall…

"I'm glad. In some sense, we are peers." said the self-proclaimed young artist. "Biologist and artist are the same kind of people. They dedicate their passion to the glorious nature."

The campground lighted up golden campfire. In the depth of the vault of night where bluish clouds glowed, the fist star of winter night arose like a drop of silver water bead shivering on a blue onyx board.

They heard Toris with his slightly hoarse voice—this young man caught a cold recently—explaining to the soldiers around him about the names of stars, classification based on brightness, constellations they belonged to, etc. Toris studied astronomy in Moscow University before the war. He was so preoccupied that he didn't even notice Natasha, sitting by a campfire somewhere behind him, also listening to him talking about the secrets of the sky.

"If it's like you said, then Toris is also like one of our peers." Wang Yao thought of what Ivan just said and smiled, "Except that our field is the earth and his is in the sky."

"Natasha is more in his range. Natashenka wants to be a musician in the future and the sound of music will always fly to the sky!" Ivan looked at his sister by the campfire, seemingly to have buried herself in thoughts, and he slyly raised the corner of his mouth, "I don't oppose the idea of being his brother-in-law, but it depends on what Natasha thinks."

"Aha, so Ivan the Devil isn't that bad after all." Wang Yao was happy for Toris. He tilted his head, listening to Ivan in that child-like tone of voice dreaming about the future.

"After the victory, we must do all the things we love. Maybe the history book will remember us. By then, Natasha and Toris' names will be alongside the name of the sky. And us—we will be the worker of the earth." Ivan spread his arms towards the endless snowfield. "Let our names be equal to the earth!"

As if acknowledging Ivan's fantasy, the winter night sky—clear, deep and detached from the cold—slowly spread out its dark blue wings. Stars like glittering eyes glowing upon their youthful years, embraced this piece of land sealed in ice and snow with their long and deep gaze.

"Look at those young people." said the captain to the lieutenant who overheard the soldiers' conversations in their evening round. "The war just started. We lose people every day and they might lose their own lives tomorrow. But look what they are talking about—stars, music, plant, art and what kind of people they want to be when the war ends…"

"Therefore, the victory will belong to our people." smiled the middle-aged lieutenant who had fought all his life.

"Victory…" Wang Yao repeated this pleasant word in a low voice without noticing that his voice was somehow covered with a tender sadness. "Vanya! We must survive till the day of victory, for our wishes."

"You told me, Yao, that one day Moscow will celebrate victory and peace in bright lights. Do you remember? That was a month ago under the Pushkin statue…"

Just then, Wang Yao heard Toris' fluent tongue began to stutter. No doubt that he must've noticed Natasha, with her icy cold face, was also listening to him talking about stars. With Ivan's words, Wang Yao thought happily that once the spring came, Natasha's heart would melt along with all the ice and snow.

* * *

><p>*Huangtu plateau: A loess plateau that covers a large area of the Yellow river.<p>

*"A great artist": Ivan was referring to Xu Beihong who was known for his Chinese ink painting of horses.

*Phenology: The study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate. (from Wikipedia)


	10. General Elizaveta

**Ch 10 "General Elizaveta"**

"Pear trees were blooming  
>Over the river the fog merrily flowed.<br>On the steep banks stood Katyusha,  
>Her songs were like a sunny spring day…"<p>

The remaining booms and bangs from rifles and artilleries hadn't completely vanish from the road where a battle was just fought; but as soldiers were on their way back to the campground, they heard a lovely singing voice.

Who was singing "Katyusha"? Who was singing about spring, love, the front-line soldier and the lovely girl? Wang Yao started humming this familiar tune involuntarily. Before the war which already seemed like a century ago when he was still in high school in Moscow, a lovely girl taught him this song—the first Russian song he learned…

No, this was not Lerika. This was nurse Natasha singing.

Natasha's blonde hair was braided on her forehead like a flower crown. She leaned on a slim white birch, as if she was the birch tree's sister. Maybe it was the winter sun or the girl's singing that made her usual icy face bright and warm, even radiating a sense of fondness and vitality, just like the girl Lerika…

Then, there was a series of coughings sounding like someone tried to hold back. Lerika's chestnut curly hair and rosy cheeks flashed in front of Wang Yao's eyes and disappeared into the thin air. Standing beside him was not Lerika, but Toris who was leaning on his rifle and almost coughed his lungs out. He had been under the weather for a few days and he must had caught some cold air last night while teaching everyone astronomy in the midst of freezing winter.

Natasha's singing stopped. She came up without a word, checked him out and simply annouced that he was experiencing a very severe case of cold and would not be able to carry out any mission for the next few days; then, she headed towards the bunker while Toris, in his terribly hoarse voice, trying to speak, "I'm fine…Natasha, keep singing."

"Come over." The girl suddenly turned around in front of the bunker, "Let me get some medications for you."

Suddenly, Wang Yao thought his ears went crazy—he heard noises of children. It sounded like a group of small children, in their high-pitched small voices, were talking at the road behind them.

It looked like a bus was pulling over by the road due to some mechanical issues. A few women dressed like nursery staffs were removing their luggages and leading the children off the bus. A middle-aged man in leather jacket who seemed to be their director was explaining their situation to the army commander:

"You see, Lieutenant. These kids were going to be sent to the back from occupied Leningrad. At first, we took the train but the rail was blown up by the Germans. We finnally got a vehicle, but just when we were so close to Moscow, the bus broke down..."

"Then let the children wait in our infantry campground for a while. We will contact Moscow right now and they will send another bus to pick you up." The lieutenant's eyes were red from days of tiresome plannings and missions; but, in front of these unexpected guests—specifically speaking, a group of children ranging from two to eight years of age—he tried to make himself look friendly.

The infantry area suddenly became so lively. On the othewise exhausted and distressed faces of soldiers who were drained from several days of battle, there appeared to be smiles—fatherly and brotherly smiles. Those big callous hands covered with black fume stains were used to handle weapons; now, they were carefully lifting those little kids onto their laps, asking about their name, age and so on. Among these sweet childish voices were a few foreign accents—those kids were probably the same situation as Wang Yao, sent by their governments to study in the Soviet Union.

Wang Yao had always loved children and after knowing their similar backgrounds, he felt even closer to those little guys. He caught his eyes on a little girl of merely five or six years old. She had a lovely light brown ponytail; those crystal green eyes were sparkling a high and mighty spirit.

"Elizaveta Hedervary." He knelt down in front of her and read the name sewed on her clothes. "So, little girl, you are little Eliza, right?"

"I'm not little girl and my name is not little Eliza. Comrade, you need to apologize to me!" The little girl pouted her little mouth.

This caught Wang Yao off guard. "Alright, I apologize. But what do I call you?"

"I am Elizaveta, five-star general* of field, navy and air." The little girl answered in a serious tone like a grown-up and that beautiful round face was full of childly pride, fearing nothing. "You can just call me General. See!"

"General Elizaveta" was pulling something on her shoulder in smugness. Wang Yao didn't want to irritate "the General", so he refrained himself from laughing and looked towards her finger. There he found that "the General's" clothes was slighly different from other children—outside her nursery white coat tied a woman-style red scarf, just like a cape worn by those almighty generals in ancient times.

Wang Yao spoke Russian with Chinese accent and the little girl's accent sounded like central European. It was amazing that they could understand each other.

Wang Yao came to know that: "the General" just turned six this year; "the General's" parents were big heros in the Hungarian guerrilla troops; "the General" thought chocolates were more delicious than jam and would one day order the whole world's jam factories to start producing chocolates instead; "the General" was good at many different things, especially fortune-telling of love life; "the General" hadn't learned writing yet but could recite many many poems, especially the poem of the great Hungarian poet and soldier, Petofi.

"Because Petofi is my grandma's grandpa!" "General Elizaveta" proudly announced.

"Young man, please don't take it seriously." An older nursery staff walked by them, "Just two days ago, she said that Attila the Hun was her grandfather!"

"Auntie Vera, you should call me General Elizaveta." "The General" corrected her in all seriousness, then quickly turned back to Wang Yao, "That's okay. I will send out an order tomorrow so that Petofi will be my grandma's grandpa."

"I obey your order, General." said Wang Yao, mimicking her serious tone. He didn't think he was fooling a child. Maybe someone just got that magical power in them—they talked like grandiose fantasies in mythology that even though you knew the coarseness and difficulty of reality, you would willingly believe in everything they said. Like this self-important little girl; like his good friend Vanya…He couldn't see him at the moment but knew that he was in the cavalry base nearby.

"The General" was very moved and saluted him:

"I promote you to be my general! Everybody who obeys my order will be promoted!" "The General's" plump little hand pointed towards the campground, "You see, I already promoted General Feliciano, General Lovino and General Antonio. They were in the same nursery as me. Actually, Lovino never listened to me, but his brother General Feliciano cried and begged me. Ah, I had to!"

The six-year-old "General" pat her chest proudly. There was a delicate little pouch sewed there, seemed to hold things like some sort of juju.

"As part of the medal ceremony, I will tell your fortune with this juju. General Elizaveta is the best at love fortune-telling! "

* * *

><p>*Five-star general: i.e. Generalssimus, supreme commander and highest military rank in Soviet army.<p> 


	11. Lying to A Child

**Ch 11 Lying to A Child**

"Love fortune-telling…"

Wang Yao had certainly seen the way his silly female classmates plucking petals before. Just as he was searching words to subtly reject her, "General Elizaveta" opened her mouth authoritatively:

"I'm different from those silly girls! All they know is twirling little flowers. But me," she cleared her throat and proudly held the juju in front of his face, "My grandma's grandpa is Petofi! My grandpa is Attila the Hun! Every generation in my family is big hero on horseback! I use my ancestral juju to do fortune-telling and I got it right every time!"

As she just finished her words, a three-year-old boy immediately got out of a soldier's arms, stumbling towards them, climbed onto Wang Yao's knees and whispered into his ear with irritation.

"Damn! She didn't do it right! Do you know who she said it was for me?" little boy moaned in anger and frustration, almost about to cry. "It was big fool Antonio!"

"The General" immediately refuted his opinion, "General Lovino! I am the five-star general and whatever I told you is right!"

"I want a cute girl, but Antonio is a stupid boy!" The little boy buried his face on Wang Yao's neck and cried. The feather-like soft hair tickled Wang Yao but he didn't dare to laugh—afterall, laughing at a crying and whining "general" wasn't very nice.

"So what! Boys can be with boys, too! I did it for Feliciano and his is a boy too, but he looked very happy!" "General Elizaveta" resumed her naughty smiles, "So now, the juju needs to ask you some questions. First, have you loved? "

Wang Yao answered "no" without much thought, then noticed "the general" had her green eyes fixed on his knees and then quickly snatched something from it. He realized that, as the pouty "general" Lovino was rubbing his little body against his arms, a small pouch hidden in his chest pocket dropped on his knees.

"The General" flipped it over and examined this delicate little thingy. She couldn't read the words embroided, but the pink silk emiting an elusive fragrance—a favorite scent among Moscow gals—as well as the violet flowers embroided with three-color threads of red, yellow and violet had undoubtely gave away Wang Yao's secret.

The six-year-old "General" stared at the fidgeting young man with a solemn look on her face. "You're terrible." She cleared her throat in seriousness, "I wanted to do the love-telling for you, but you lied to the holy juju. The juju will be upset!"

How could a person face, with full composure, the conviction of a child who was lied to by himself? Fortunately, Lovino jumped out from Wang Yao's arms, yelling in his very sweet and sharp voice "Kiss me!", and strode his two short legs—towards where he was running came Natasha and Toris who just left from the bunker.

"The General" soon diverted her attention to the beautiful pair and also ran towards them, while kept turning her head to Wang Yao, "Auntie Vera said that you're still a good boy if you admit your mistake. I'll come back to you later but you need to tell me the truth!"

Why did he lie to a child? Why?

And in that unforgettable evening, under the Pushkin statue, didn't he also say to Vanya that he haven't fallen in love with someone in Moscow? When had he become such a person that lie to a child and his best friend? "No, that wasn't love." he murmured like a little kid, searching for an excuse. "That was before the war, nothing but teenager's foolish fondness…"

He raised up his burning face from his palms and fixed his gaze at the pouch little Liza put back on his knees. As he examined the pouch—the fine stitches were neat and compact, the embroiderment so delicately done and matched with the rich colors. Which girl could have made such a delicate pouch if she was not without a true and earnest heart? And those dainty words embroidered: 'Conquor the Fascists, Return in triumph.'—Lerika"

Didn't he always keep inside all those scrap papers with his biology diary? Didn't he always cherish the pouch in his chest pocket and would not separate from it for a minute?

"You said you haven't loved anyone, looking for excuses…as if this does justice to little Liza and Vanya." said Wang Yao to himself, "But are you worthy to Lerika?"

"As she walked she sang a sweet song,  
>Of her silver eagle of the steppe,<br>Of the one she'd loved so dearly  
>And the one whose letters she had kept."<p>

He saw Natasha standing not too farway, carrying a rare smile on her face and teaching a song to the cluster of children surrounding her. Yes, she was teaching them "Katyusha"… At the age of fifteen, he was sent to a school in Moscow, along with the sorrow for his deceased father and separation from home. It was the girl sitting next to him, Lerika Lisichina, who awakened the liveliness of a young man's heart with her bright smiles. She helped him with Russian language and taught him songs; the first song he learned from her was indeed "Katyusha"…

On June 21, 1941 of the eve of graduation, they danced waltz one after another; at the end, stood shoulder by shoulder in the hallway outside the classroom. Lerika's curly chestnut hair and rosy cheeks appeared particularly beautiful under the gleaming stars. "Yao, is there anything you want to tell me?" "Yes." He musterred up the courage, but what came out of his mouth all turned into things like raising oaks, breeding cranes and improving the strains of grass—things that would have received praises from even the most fussy teacher in biology lab, but turned out to be total nonsense in here.

The war broke out on the next day. All the boys in class went to the army office and enlisted themselves out of young men's typical heroism; all the girls, meanwhile, were sewing pouches for them out of typical romanticism of young girls. Most pouches were made simply for friendship and patriotism, but the one he received from Lerika was so much finer than others… Then, the army got busy and they didn't stay in touch.

"We didn't even admit our feelings to each other." murmured sullenly to himself as he sat on the ground. In the beginning, he really missed her at the front and hoped to receive her letters; but, from some time on, he somehow stopped missing her…...probably around the same time when he met Ivan Braginsky. Now, he must admit the fact that he did liked Lerika, but he just didn't want to admit it in front of Vanya. He didn't want Vanya to know that he had a "relationship" before.

But why lying to Vanya?

He quickly found a reason: it was because of wartime. He, Wang Yao, was a hero's son. If others knew that he was thinking of girl and nonsense during the time of war, it would surely bring shame to his father's good name.

"Yes, exactly." He said it out loud, as if by doing so would give himself more assurance—afterall, he himself couldn't really believe this lofty and idealistic reason…

"General Elizaveta" ran towards him, her small round face contained a convincing smile.

"Have you thought it through?" she shouted, "Let me do another telling for you…"

When right then, Wang Yao heard the familiar buzzing sound above their heads—several bombers marked with the iron cross were thrusting, not to Moscow, but towards their campground by the road!

"Lie down!"

Without thinking, he threw himself over to the dumbstrucked little girl and pressed her solidly under his body. Deafening bombing sound and children's earthshaking crying and screaming surrounded them…

It seemed that almost a century's time had passed before the bombing was finally over. Wang Yao helped the little girl up. Every single child at the campground, including the impeccable "General Elizaveta", was all crying.

No blood. Nobody got hurt.

"It was only sounds over here." An experienced soldier opened his mouth, "The bombs all went over to the cavalry unit."

An unprecedented sense of dread suddenly gripped and emptied out his heart. Wang Yao rushed to the cavalry side…


	12. Quarrel

**Ch 12 Quarrel**

Why did the Germans picked this very moment to bomb? Right after the cavalry soldiers just returned from their missions? At that very moment, the soldiers had just sat themselves down, getting busy joking around with the kitchen people who were serving them food. Ivan was away from all of them—after he tied Kostya, he habitually walked to the boundary of their campground, looking over to the infantry side.

Bombs exploded as if right inside of his head. When Ivan climbed up from the ground, the whole world around him was turned upside down.

Soldiers and logistic personels were all gone—what remained in where they were appeared to be a gigantic dark hole covered with burned soil. Around the big hole was scattered with shapeless pots and weapons damaged from the explosion, as well as pieces of body parts—of both men and horses. A few people who just got out of the bunker were searching among the bloody shapeless bodies of anyone who still remained a hint of breath.

As if the explosion just destroyed his hearing, Ivan couldn't hear anything except that dearest neighing sound—that was his dear Kostya who had carrried him out of life and death. Everytime he lost friends before, Ivan would embrace his Kostya's long neck, whispered quietly to his ears, "Kostya, we will revenge for them." Then, Kostya's ears would softly rubbed his nose—he was a good and sensible child…

And now, Kostya was there struggling and howling in pain. But when Ivan knelt down beside him and hugged his neck like before, he quiet down and lied there without moving, only twitched occasionally from the pain. He was like always, clever and sensible, even when his two front legs disappeared without a trace from the explosion.

He brushed Kostya's nose, putting a small piece of bread into the trembling mouth. Ivan always worried like a child that his horse didn't have enough food to eat, so he often saved some for the horse from daily ration. Kostya licked his fingers with gentility, that pair of intelligent eyes bearing tremendous amount of pain were quietly looking at him, as if looking into his heart. Among people he knew, only one person had those dark round eyes like Kostya…

That person was running towards him from the infantry.

"Vanya! Vanya…"

"It'll stop hurting, good boy!" Ivan said to his dearest white horse with unprecedented tenderness, "Don't be afraid, Kostya! Don't be afraid!"

He held up the rifle, stood up and, without even blinking an eye, fired at Kostya.

The shot was as if fired right into Wang Yao's heart that for a moment, his two feet were nailed to the ground, not faraway from Ivan and Kostya. Nobody noticed him. Natasha who followed him behind found out that her brother was unharmed, then turned to the wounded with other infantry soldiers who rushed here.

It was hell. Ivan and Kostya were motionless like a statue. The horse's dark round eyes quivered half-open and half-closed, looking at Wang Yao, almost about to let out a drop of tear…Many years ago, his dear white horse Feiyun was looking at him with those exact same eyes, struggling in pain before died. But Wang Yao couldn't save him. Hot blood poured down Feiyun's snow-white body, like the dream he had about his father, about the hot blood flowing on top of the Changbai Mountain*.

"Why did you kill him?" Wang Yao opened his mouth with a voice that didn't sound like himself's.

"Why?" Ivan directed a strange smile at him, "What else is there to do? Look, two legs gone."

"But he could live!" Wang Yao cried out, incapable of suppressing his emotion, and kneelt down besides Kostya's body. "It's not like we don't have medications…Look at his eyes, he clearly wanted to live…"

He couldn't finish the sentence. Feiyun's dark round eyes thirsting for life was looking at him over the layers and depth of time, engulfed him like dark night.

The smile disappeared from Ivan's face and was replaced with a sneering expression. "There are a lot more people who want to live….Can't get enough hands on them." Ivan conveniently pointed to the flattened cavalry base behind him. "In your opinion, we should patch up Kostya, decorate him with a medal and send him off to the veteran's sanatorium to comfortably live till old age?"

Wang Yao felt all the blood rushed to his head. A small loathsome voice in his head was telling him that Ivan meant horse less than people. He stared at Ivan like a blindman while Ivan pulled his arm, trying to help him up.

"Why are you so sentimental?" Ivan's voice sounded unreal, as if it was floating from thousands of miles away. "Come. Let's find the cook. Don't you have a bunch of kids on your side? They get to eat meat today…"

As if he was scalded by a red hot tong, Wang Yao sprang up and swinged his arm forcefully, almost pushed the unexpected Ivan to the ground.

He wanted to scream at Ivan, but what rushed out of the throat was nothing but his hoarse, low-pitch voice:

"…Go find him yourself! Yes, it's your horse. Do whatever you want with it…But did you look at his eyes? He wanted to live…"

"Kostya is my horse. What he was trying to say, I know better than you." Ivan wasn't afraid to look into his stare. "He's not human. He's a warhorse… A man could do something else without legs, but what could a horse do after losing two legs? Kostya was so proud. He wouldn't want to just sit there waiting to die."

"There isn't a single creature who doesn't yearn for life!" Wang Yao couldn't hear his own yelling. Feiyun's blood, father's blood as well as everything he had seen in his suffering motherland and the arduous battlefield of Moscow, all enfolded and coerced him like shock waves from exploded bombs, buzzing at his ears. "We've already lost so many lives…are we to suffer even more… Braginsky! No wonder they call you Ivan the Devil…"

Ivan grabbed his collar, under those two raised sword-like brows, the violet eyes shone a peculiarly bright color—the kind of color when one stared right into the sun and realized in a flash of burning pain.

"Wang, I'm gonna tell you this. If one day when my comrad begged me to finish his life for the pain, I wouldn't think twice either." A child-like cruelty appeared on Ivan's face. "And the way you're talking like you've never seen a dead man before makes me wonder if you really had a sort of 'special' past…"

Wang Yao fiercely grabbed Ivan's hands on his collar and threw him over to the side. The throw wasn't intended to be used on Ivan, but he simply couldn't bear the devil's hands placing on him.

He turned around and returned to his own campground, afraid that any delay would cause him to lose control of the tight fists.

The cook made a huge pot of horse meat anyway, all given to the wounded soldiers of the cavalry unit. The children didn't catch the feast. As soon as Wang Yao got back, the bus sent from Moscow came and picked up everyone from the nursery. "General Elizaveta" still resented not finishing the romance-telling as she walked on the bus, promising Wang Yao that if they met again, she would do another telling for him…

"Maybe you'll never see me alive again." thought Wang Yao as he forced himself into a smile, waving goodbye to "the General".

Ever since coming to the front, this was the first time he realized that maybe one day, he would die.

* * *

><p>*Changbai Mountain: A mountain range in Northeastern China. It's covered with snow most time of the year.<p>

-TBC


	13. New Mission

**Ch 13 New Mission**

"We will start off at 2000." At six-thirty in the evening, all preparations of crossing the fire line were finished. The division commander shook each of the seven people's hands, "Use this time to have a good rest."

Only after the other six members of the squad had left did Wang Yao started walking back towards the bunker. This was for the best, not having to walk together with Braginsky the Devil. Although both being members of this scouting squad and would have to stay together in the next few days, Wang Yao still liked to enjoy the final vacant hours and avoid him completely.

This was the historical winter of 1941. After several months of arduous battles confronting the German army in the outskirt of Moscow, everyone from the generals in headquarters to the soldiers in trenches knew clearly that this was the time to counterstrike the invaders and wiped them out before Moscow.

On the second day after the quarrel between Wang Yao and Ivan, the twenty-two-year-old platoon leader, Lieutenant Kaletin received an order to send off a squad to the occupied Rogachevo-Bereza region for reconnaissance mission. Whether they were capable to gather sufficient and correct information would determine if they could reclaim Tula—a city 165 kilometers south of Moscow—according to plan.

Lieutenant Kaletin wanted to go with his fellow scouts who each other had withstood the test of many missions. But after several difficult months, some experienced scouts foreverly remained under the frozen soil; some were injured and sent back to the hospital; others never came back from the mission. The new recruits didn't have any experience.

Among all scouts that were good and useable, the lieutenants counted only Kareshev, Sasha, Pavlik, Egorov and Wang. "We need one more." The lieutenant reported to the division commander, "But Lorinaitis fell ill at this moment."

"Braginsky of our cavalry side already reported to me and applied to join your squad." said the division commander. "His home is in Bereza. It helps to bring someone who knows the way around."

As Wang Yao walked out of the division commander's bunker, he saw the scouting squad members hanging out there. The cheerful and chatty Sasha—the young man who went with Wang Yao to testify for Toris—was rolling makhorka* cigarette as he poked fun of Ivan.

"I say, dude! You've gotta get used to our footman's way of scouting! You had your comfy life style on four legs before, but now you only got two to rely on!"

"If I won't get used to it, I wouldn't join the infantry mission." A child-like cruelty resurfaced in Ivan's eyes. "And what kind of rider am I now? My Kostya had already sacrificed…"

Wang Yao kept a sullen straight face, trying not to look at him, turned around and about to walk away. The middle-aged sapper* Kareshev walked up and pat his shoulder, "Young man, this is not a good time to hold grudges. You might regret it and it would be too late."

He—a hero's son—Wang Yao, was never a bad boy that provoked conflicts. Never had he been!

As he walked straight back to the bunker, Wang Yao threw himself on the haystack and was secretly mad at himself: they were about to carry out a mission but here he was, holding grudges for personal matters.

Didn't he always want to be like his father? A cultured, composed and widely-respected character! He was never upset but was always convincing to other people…These were what he heard from his mother and other old comrades since his father came home only once in a while after a long period of time. As the son, he had always admired his father, helped out his mother and took care of his little sister. He never got into trouble with anyone except once when a few hooligans at school called him a wild child without a father. Being always a polite and easy-going character, he went nuts and got into hell of a fight with them. He always took pride for his father but couldn't tell others what his father was doing…*

Every time his father came home in a different look: he could be a business man wearing gold-rimmed glasses this time and a humble street pedlar carrying a shoulder pole the next. There was once that his sister Chunyan* opened the door and was frightened into tears by the big beard man outside. It was around that time when father brought the entire family to Yan'an* where he had new friends and could proudly tell them who his father was. And it was also that time when father gave him the horse Feiyun on his departure: "Son, when you grow up, ride Feiyun and come to my troops!"

But no one undertood these things! If people knew that his conflict with Ivan was simply due to a horse, they would've thought that he acted over-sentimental. Ever since yesterday when Ivan said that "I almost have to suspect if you really had a sort of 'special' past", he decided not to befriend with Ivan anymore.

"I'm a soldier." He said to himself, "I obey the lieutenant's order unconditionally, and will cooperate with my fellow soldiers unconditionally."

He jumped up from the haystack like a military man, covered his winter coat with snow camouflage overcoat, tied hand grenades and a dagger on the waistbelt and put his handgun in his inner pocket. As a scout soon to start the mission, his body merged into the vast snow field as one, becoming an alert snow wizard. He handed all the letters, photos and identifications to the supply chief to hold on for him, only saving one thing in his innermost chest pocket—the pouch that Lerika made for him. Ever since Branginsky shot that dear little white horse that resembled so much of his Feiyun, all there was to cherish in his military life was reduced to this little pouch.

As he was about to set out, Toris who had been lying in bed in a corner called him with a hoarse voice. Toris' cold seemed to be getting worse than yesterday.

Wang Yao quickly walked over, with one hand gently holding the sick friend's hand and the other placing on the patient's forehead. Then he frowned, "The fever still hasn't gone yet. Make sure you take your medications on time."

"Here." Toris reached into the pocket of his military coat which covered him, pulled out a small bag and put into Wang Yao's hand. "I saved up some food these few days. I've got no appetite anyway, so take it with you on the road."

"Isn't this the pocket you used to carry the sugar?"

"Sugar, all given to the kids…It's ice and snow everywhere, Natasha won't find any flowers anyway. Might as well put it into good use…"

Wang Yao looked at his friend's emaciated face from prolonged fever and suddenly wrapped his arms around him into a tight hug:

"Toris! My good friend…If I could distribute this world's happiness, I would give the biggest portion of happiness to you…"

"Take care of yourself on the road…You always think about others and forget about yourself…If only I could've not caught the cold!"

"Listen to what you say! Toris, you are the one who always look after everyone else but yourself. We'll be back when you recover." He smiled to the patient like a little boy, "Maybe then Natasha would understand your heart…"

Wang Yao lifted the curtain and walked into December's glorious bitter cold. The squad was leaving at eight o'clock to the enemy's rear.

* * *

><p>Makhorka: A type of nicotine leaf used to roll cigarette. It was smoked casually by the lower classes before normal tobacco became widely available (after WWII), and is still sometimes smoked by peasants and farmers.<p>

Sapper: military engineer

Chunyan: Wang Yao's little sister in the story. The name is from fem!China, as is widely believed among Chinese fans.

Yan'an: A historical city of inner China; also the CCP headquarter between 1935 and 1948.

Wang Yao could not reveal his father's identity because at the time, the Communist and the Nationalist were in a struggle against each other; revealing one's identity could've been extremely disadvantaged if one was in the other's territory. In addition, both parties at the time were at war against the Japanese (the Nationalist was the official government troops while the Communist was mainly involved with guerilla warfares). Revealing one's identity as a soldier would've risked his safety than if he were to pretend as civilian, be it businessman or farmer.


	14. Snow Crawling

**Ch 14 Snow Crawling**

All was left behind: the swaying gas lamp inside the bunker, the sizzling water pot on top of the campfire, big sister Tonya's letters from Moscow, Natashenka's anxious warning before departure, the fight with Wang Yao in the previous morning—all were left behind the warning line of barred wires.

What faced afront was a dark and thick night sky where low clouds were racing past. In the gap between two overlapping clouds hid a trifle of cold bleak moonlight, as if blanketed with a layer of faint red dust. The snow field with scattering bushes was covered under such tremendous light and shadow that it almost resemble an inauspiscious sign.

The lieutenant ordered crawling. There was a long way to crawl through according to the previously studied map. Snow mercilessly seeped into Ivan's camo coat and slowly melted inside. Snow water mixing with sweat caused the newcomer to feel shivery in a moment and suffocating in the next. Only now had he realized that this was how it had always been for the infantry soldiers; cavalries couldn't compare to them. This rider who had been spoiled by the comfortable and flashy lifestyle on horseback suddenly had a deep feeling of pity and respect to his fellow soldiers.

Not faraway from him, there was the foreign young man of smaller build crawling nimbly at ease without much exertion. "What an experienced scout!" Ivan struggled to adjust his movement while thinking over the previous day with a heavy heart, "But seeing his character yesterday, who would've thought that he belongs to the front!"

From the hill at far came the rumbling sound. The frozen ground responded by shivering beneath their elbows. A few flare bombs flashed through the pitch-dark sky—they must speed up. Once reaching the woods over the hill foot, nobody would be able to find them.

Suddenly a flash of white light brightened the snow field. The firing lights of machine guns immediately spreaded densely across the trail in front of them. It seemed that they were trapped here. But just then, the firings seemed to change their aim and, instead, directed the mad strafing at the bushes adjacent to them.

"Follow me…" Ivan heard the lieutenant's voice but for a second he couldn't react due to excessive shock as well as stiff limbs from crawling in snow. At this very moment, Ivan felt that someone stopped beside him for a second and dragged him up from the snow. Only then did he finally came to his senses, as if awakening from a dream, and followed everyone else into the nearby woods.

They collapsed on the ground as the most dangerous and unbearable moment had past. Sasha's low voice came into his ears, "Pavlik diverted their firing…he ran over there…"

The enemy's machine guns were busy strafing at the bushes and the flare bombs temporarily blinded their eyes. Before finishing up Pavlik, the enemies didn't have time to look the other way. The soldier whose last name hadn't been remembered by most people saved their lives, thought Ivan with deep emotions. But when he was unable to catch up with the group due to shock and exhaustion, who, in the moment when his life was hanging by a thread, pulled him up?

Even just for a split of a second, he wouldn't mistaken that hand with any other's….Wang Yao sat near him without a word, leaning his back on a big tree. The tree's shadow covered over his delicate but serious face with a look of comtemplation and solitude, a force of possessing complete insight of everything but chose to hold his tongue. A strand of black hair hanging at his pale forehead was lined with a shell of ice, looking like a thin but vivid scar.

Ivan moved his body slightly over to him and placed his own frozen hand on his. He didn't move away.

"Thank you." As the last syllable came out of his mouth, Ivan felt Wang Yao giving his wrist a tight squeeze. On this black-haired young man's face, there remained a look between mindlessness and preoccupation. He slightly tightened up his thin lips. This involuntary gesture made his young face revealing a somewhat childish melancholy.

"Oh you…" Ivan moved his gaze away from the other's face, secretly pondering over the warmth and strength of that squeeze on his wrist. "Who are you after all…"

The lieutenant ordered the squad to rest for a moment. In the depth of woods hidden under the massive layers of spruce branches, they started a campfire small enough to warm their hands and canned food only; bigger campfire would attract the enemy's attention. The scouts silently touched the vodka cups in their hands for Pavlik who stayed in the bushes forever.

At this time, Egorov who was on lookout gave them a signal: a patroling German soldier was coming into the woods. Ivan saw the lieutenant eyed Wang Yao a signal, then the two quietly walked over to the end of the woods. After a very brief struggling, the two men escorted back this unlucky German soldier.

Ivan had heard that Wang Yao was good at taking captives. This black-haired young man was smaller than Europeans but solidly-built and powerful, often able to bring back "tongues*" from previous reconnaissance missions. Ivan certainly had seen how he dealt with the rude squad leader Kulikov before, but seeing with his own eyes of the way he tamed the captive, Ivan couldn't help but to admire his skills.

It seemed that the captive was fearful and honestly answered all the questions the soldiers asked. They came to know various pieces of useful information—far from enough, but there was nothing more they could get out of him. In previous missions, captured "tongues" would be brought back to the headquarter to be questioned, then sent to the captive camps. But now was only the beginning of a long scouting mission. How could they take this burden along with them?

The captive seemed to have detected their intention and began to tremble, begging with his not so fluent Russian, "Sir! Comrades! I'm a factory worker! Please look at my hands. I'm not a Nazi! I was forced into the recruitment…My wife passed away. I have an old mother and four children…"

The lieutenant looked at the callous worker's hands with sympathy. They searched a photo from his body—a garden in front of a small house stood this German soldier, his white-haired mother and four children of no more than ten years old, shoulder to shoulder, with an irresistable sorrow on each person's face for the seperation at hand.

"What he said is true, but we have to kill him." said the lieutenant firmly. "Who wants to do it?"

Before the lieutenant finished his words, the captive's throat grumbled a strange noise. Wang Yao's right hand still grabbed the captive's neck from behind, the left hand pulling out a dagger from his chest. As he released his hand, the captive's heavy body noiselessly fell on the blood-stained snow.

The ice on that strand of hair already melted from the fire, leaving the wet strand sticking onto his chilling forehead. For some reason, it looked even more like a scar to Ivan that he almost wanted to step forward and brush away the hair that irritated him.

"If I were caught, I wouldn't say a word." said Wang Yao abruptly as he raised his hand and threw the captive's photo into the fire.

* * *

><p>"tongues": alive captives<p> 


	15. Rogachevo—Bereza

**Ch 15 Rogachevo—Bereza**

Wang Yao loved to share his joy with others, but gloom was always hidden at the bottom of his heart. Only the slightly frowned brows and the lips tightened in his childly manner could reveal of the "fighting with the woeful rider inside his heart".

During the seemingly endless crawling, Wang Yao secretly glanced over at Ivan beside him. It seemed that snow crawling was no easy task for Ivan. Without Kostya to follow him around, how difficult it must be for this large build cavalry soldier! Then Wang Yao was uneasy to find out that his previous worry of being cumbered by Ivan was replaced by the concern of that person's safety.

"I'm not like this." Wang Yao held a handful of snow and rubbed on his burning face. "I'm the son of Comrade Wang. A brave scout!"

Deep inside, he saw it clearly that there was nothing better for Ivan to do under that situation. Kostya was not going to survive anyway. If someone's death benefited the victory of this war than staying alive, then the best thing to do was embracing death. Pavlik couldn't had survived because he had to cover the squad's advance; the German captive couldn't had survived because he had seen the squad's secret mission. No one was destined to survive in the war.

Although the more his reason justified for Ivan's action, the more he was mad at himself for the irresistable grievance he felt then. He had always wanted to be a decisive person like his father, but Ivan's emergence into his life had made him sentimental. If Kostya was killed by someone else, it would quickly received his understanding. But devil Ivan's action stirred up the bitter sweet memory buried deep at heart, causing him to throw a tantrum regardless of his own judgement. And to say that his resentment was over that shot, he was more annoyed that Ivan made his well-exercised heart defenseless.

He should have known! In those days when they were good friends, didn't he already encountered Ivan's devilish skills, making him laugh and making him cry?

"He's a devil." Wang Yao said to himself, "From the very first day at the front, I tried to exercise myself to be like father. A heart as strong as the steel. But then this great devil got into my heart, digging up the weak side of me on purpose! No, no! Treat him only like any other person. Be a comrade to him and only that. If I keep the close relationship with him like before, it'll be the end of me!"

So, Wang Yao voluntarily took the responsibility of executing the captive. Although he had killed enemies in active combat or captured alive in scouting missions, never had he done anything to a disarmed one. However, he was in imminent need to prove that he was not a weak person. When Ivan put the hand on his, he almost surrendered to this devil.

In the following two days, the squad sneaked around mysteriously in the Rogachevo—Bereza region. They had obtained large amount of precious information regarding the layout of German army and reported several times back to the headquarter with their portable radio transmitter.

"Spring field, spring field, this is crane. Please answer."

"Crane, this is spring field. Go ahead with the report."

Every time when such conversations echoed in the thick and stagnated cold air, their hearts were put on wings and flew back to their own people—over there were good-tempered logistic soldiers serving them hot food, home letters full of longing brought by military post-office, proud but dutiful nurse and the smitten patient who was tormented by his love for her, as well as their major troops planning to counterstrike the invaders…Over there they got everything!

There was only one place they hadn't been to and that was Ivan's hometown—the village of Bereza. The squad had been searching for a certain commanding office and it could very possibly be there. Out of military men's pride, the scouts would not return to their own people before they got to the bottom of this whole matter.

Surely, the enemy wouldn't have much difficulty comprehending of why single dead bodies of soldiers and officers had been found one after another, why suddenly there were Soviet jets flying over their well-disguised ammunition storage, and why there were often the illusions of seeing "white ghosts". Apparently, a group of people dressed in snow camouflage had slipped in, aimed at scouting, gathering information and destroying the combative force whilest transmitting all information back to their commanding center in the process.

A raid targeting this mysterious squad had began. There was a platoon of German soldiers running right into the squad who were transmitting the report inside an abandoned barn. But the squad threw several grenades and disappeared into the snow field under the chaos of German soldiers' howling and flying bullets.

When they ran into the woods and hid themselves, they found out that the only ambulant ones left were Wang Yao, Ivan and Egorov. The cheerful and chatty Sasha and the faithful old Kareshev had been killed in the barn raid. Their director, lieutenant Kaletin was wounded on his chest, struggling to stumble into the woods before collapsing on the ground.

Wang Yao wrapped the wound for the lieutenant. He felt his hands and heart were frigid into the bones. The radio transmitter carried on Ivan's back had blocked seven bullets for him during the raid, and, while Ivan remained unharmed, his savior was completely scraped and rendered unuseable. The squad, already losing more than half of its people, now had lost contact with the headquarter.

Ivan used the gunstock to trash the dead transmitter into pieces. He certainly had been under this situation before. Cavalry scouts riding on four legs were faster than infantry on two and could get deeper into the enemy's territory; but, it was also more easily to slump into a dangerous solo hunt. Back then, his dear Kostya would bring him out of the deadly situation; Kostya knew his way back no matter where they were. But now Kostya was no longer here…

How about his stubborn and inscrutable friend? Ivan secretly glanced at Wang Yao and, as expected, noticed the inkling of problem from his frowned brows and tightened lips. Although Wang Yao had been out on many missions, they were all brief ones that promised to return within the day. The obstacle they were facing today was a first time to him.

Egorov opened his mouth. This man had been a guerilla fighter around the same area. After he lost contact with the guerilla troop, he crossed the battleline and joined the formal army, into their own people. "When I was in the guerilla troop, the ranger Mikhalech was definitely a reliable contact. I know where his cabin is. We should hide over there. He got a pretty good cellar and the Germans won't be able to find it."

Ivan knew the old man Mikhalech who lived alone. The old man's cabin was in the nearby woods of Bereza village. When Ivan was still the little boy Vanechka*, he often messed around with his little friends in the woods, playing fighting games. The old man would push open the window, yelling a curse word or two, then invited them into the cabin for tea and freshly baked buns. That was such a long time ago! And today he, Ivan Braginsky, returned to this piece of woods, not to play fighting games but to fight a real one.

Ivan and Egorov walked in the front, carrying the wounded lieutenant on each of their side. Wang Yao carried the lieutenant's and his own weapons, following behind them by only a few footsteps. But Ivan couldn't resist but to keep turning back his head and look at him, as if the other person would be engulfed anytime by the snowfield, the forest and the hills behind. In the vast and boundless world of the night, this young man from the East appeared so thin, so small and so pale. Star light sprinkled on his face like snowflakes. His contemplating and solitary look fell into Ivan's eyes and had remained there for the next several decades.

* * *

><p>*Vanechka: short form of Ivan<p> 


	16. At Mikhalech's Cabin

**Ch 16 At Mikhalech's Cabin**

Whether it was little boy Vanechka ten years ago or today's scout Ivan, they all thought the most miraculous and heavenly building in the world was none other than ranger Mikhalech's cabin. This almighty old gramp could magically pull out anything you need from unimaginable corners. Ten years ago, old gramp brought out sour milk, buns and fruit tarts for Vanechka and his little friends; today, he brought out bullets and medications for Ivan and his fellow scouts who were in desperate needs. There was even a hand-drawn map of the German army layout.

"The Germans searched here many times, but they could never find this cellar. All the goodies are hidden in there." said the old gramp (almost as tall as Ivan) as he rocked his two brushes of beard, taking care of the wounded lieutenant meanwhile flaunting to the scouts who were warming themselves by the fire stove. "What are you planning to do?"

They quickly made the decision of leaving the lieutenant here for gramp Mikhalech to look after while the three of them setting off to Bereza, to find out the location of the commanding office then immediately return to their own people. There wasn't much time left till the date of the counterstrike.

"Hold, young man." Old gramp pointed to the military coat on Wang Yao—it was in one piece before they left the base, but now had several rips and holes after days' arduous mission. "Wear this. It's warmer." He handed over his own coat. Before Wang Yao could thank him and politely refuse, the gramp continued as if speaking to himself, "I won't go broke by lending you a coat! Look what aweful shape your coat is! Leave it here and I'll patch it up for you. You'll come by here when you return anyway."

"His entire gestures are so coordinate, so nimble and elegant." thought Ivan. "Even when he's changing."

Wang Yao folded the military coat that he just took off and handed over to the old gramp. In a time of less than half a minute, he was standing there in his winter jacket only, not at all noticing of Ivan's absorbed gaze of fascination upon him. The young body in front of his eyes was finally freed from the burden of his everyday long coat, that even a thick layer of winter jacker could not make the slender and shapely figure any more brawny.

As Wang Yao put on old gramp's coat, Ivan even felt a hint of regret. Then, he saw Wang Yao hunched his shoulder involuntarily like a child sneaking into adult's clothes and attempting to prop up the oversized shoulder parts. All of a sudden, there was as if a small soft paw grabbing Ivan's heart, making him unable to breathe.

"Oh, you…" Ivan's lips quivered soundlessly. "You thought your small shoulders could bear it all…"

Wang Yao turned around. The swaying orange light from the gas lamp swept across his face, lighting up a subdued smile on the corner of his mouth. To Ivan, for a moment, it almost created an illusion of festival, as if Wang Yao had just finished dressing up and was about to go to a festive party with them. Just like many years ago, he and sister Tonya stood in front of their house, waiting for little Natasha to finish tying the last bow on her blond hair; then they would walk hand in hand to the new year's dance of the village and play till dawn…

As the old gramp sent them out to the door, he said:

"Vanya, if you saw something in the village, don't be too surprised. I have to warn you beforehand… Mishka was hanged by the Germans with five other guerilla fighters." A ruthless expression appeared on old gramp's face. "They were sold out by Dimka, just because the Germans listed out rewards. That bastard didn't know I was the guerilla troop's contact, or else, this pair of old bones would be swaying on that damn hanging pole with Mishka."

Ivan felt the whole world shook before his eyes. Back then, among the Bereza boys who came to old gramp's cabin for tea and snacks, three of them were best friends—Vanya, Dimka and Mishka. In his memory, Dimka had been an active boy since grammar school, always trying to be the hero when they play fighting games; compared to the two of them, the quiet Mishka did not stand out and was always assigned to sidekick roles under the bad guy.

Vanya, do you really think that you knew your best buddies? You knew their looks and habits, their likes and dislikes, but you didn't know the most important thing—their souls…

They had reached the end of the forest. Air was frigid and crystal clear like ice, allowing them to look over the gleamingly crystalline snowfield emitting a shade of blue from the reflection of the starry sky, and, in the center, cradled the village of Bereza like an infant in mother's arms.

Taking one more step, as Ivan knew, they would be walking out of the forest's merciful protection and he would also be one step closer to his dear hometown occupied by the enemy. Just then, he heard Wang Yao's low voice.

"Have you thought of what to do if we all died?"

He and Egorov were suddenlly dumbstruck. Wang Yao's voice was as though precipitated in the icy air, sounding peculiarly chilly.

"There has to be one man alive…to go back and tell people how Pavlik and everyone else sacrificed their lives. Vanya!" Wang Yao suddenly raised his head, looking at him, "Don't go into the village, Vanya! Let me and Egorov go… Everyone in the village knows you. If it was like old gramp said, then, someone would sell you out."

"What's the matter with you? All these doom talks!" He was becoming angry, "Do you just assume that we'll be caught by the Germans?"

"But what if? When we first started off, we never expected to be in this situation either. Your parents are all in the village. If someone sold you out, maybe the Germans would torture them in front of you, or maybe they would torture you in front of them…"

"Wang is right. We must consider the worst case." The former guerilla fighter Egorov cut in, "Although I have fought here before, I am not local. Nobody here knows me and Wang. Go back, Braginsky! We will soon come back."

Wang Yao suddenly stepped up towards him and seized Ivan's wrists tightly into his palms. He could feel that Wang Yao was now tipping his toes so that he could see his eyes levelly. That pair of dark round eyes like his Kostya…

"Go back, Vanya." Then, with a voice only the two could hear, he said, "Forgive me…"

Big devil Ivan Braginsky, in his twenty years of life, surrendered for the first time. "Fine, I won't go into the village with you." Then he relentlessly added, "But don't you dare asking me to leave without you two. I will be waiting right here, on the lookout for you…" although he knew very well that looking out from here had no use at all!

Egorov gave him a solid hug, then Wang Yao. As Wang Yao hugged him, said, "If you sensed anything fishy, go alone. Understood?"

Ivan was searching words to disagree with him, but his throat was like blocked by ice and snow, suffocating and cold. In fact, it was not only the throat—the entire body was nailed to the ground, no longer under his control, except that pair of a scout's eyes performing the faithful duty, gazing at their back till nothing could be seen.

* * *

><p>-TBC<p> 


	17. Pondering Over A Question

Ch 17 Pondering Over A Question

Only after a long time did Ivan finally knew where that alleged commanding center was, but by then, it didn't have much use anymore. This reconnaissance squad named "crane" had already sent back sufficient information to the headquarter; enemy's searching circle of the "crane" was closing in as well. And most importantly, in just two days their major troops would start out massive counterstrike and a great area of lands including the Rogachevo—Bereza region would be back to the hands of their own people.

If only had they decided to return immediately, they would still have a very good chance returning to their base; or, maybe just hide out in Mikhalech's cabin for two nights until their troops came.

"—But why do you still go to the village of Bereza? To a place that would be reclaimed in two days but is heavily occupied for the moment? You were never discouraged or upset during the mission, but just when it was near the end, you were talking about 'ifs' and 'worst cases'. In Bereza, there'll be a most difficult test of a lifetime—perhaps a scout's instinct already told you so. But, you went anyway, perhaps the pride and responsibility of a scout told you so…Alas! That's what scouts are…"

Ivan Branginsky only had less than four years' time to think about this question. In 1945 after the war's ended, he did not dare to think of it anymore, and not able to think of it anymore. If he kept thinking, he would almost have to climb onto a fast horse like Kostya rushing back to that December's cold night of 1941, stop the two before they went into the village and say, "Let's go back!"

But where could he find a horse like Kostya? Other horses might even run faster than him, but only Kostya could catch up with the years and ages lost in the stream of time—because out of all the horses, only that pair of dark round eyes could see into his heart.

And out of all people, there was only one pair of dark round eyes that see into his soul. In the entire lofty life of magnificent rider, soldier and artist Ivan Braginsky, he gave in for the first time before that pair of eyes that could have sunken the entire universe—and, stayed in the woods, instead of going into the village with Wang Yao.

"Why did I give in to him? Ivan will never give in for the second time!" He leaned against the trunk under a big tree, blaming himself, "I should've stayed with him!"

The memory of Wang Yao's child-like gesture as he changed his coat in the ranger's cabin ran into his heart bluntly, giving a moment of tearing pain in his chest. He—Ivan Braginsky—born and raised in the village of Bereza, now coming back to the enemy-occupied homeland only to dodge and hide like a convict, and, instead, letting him go in—that boyish young man without a single person to depend on in the foreign land of Russia…

Suddenly, an abrupt sound of handgun firing followed by hurried sounds of machine guns swept across from the village direction coming into Ivan's sensitive ears, appearing particularly clear in the stagnated cold air. Then, a series of alarms and command orders… A group of German soldiers with guns in their hands were running out of the village and searching around. Except that Ivan wouldn't let them to find him. Growing up in this land, he knew every single hideout spot in the woods when he was still a little boy playing fighting games. The dear old forest of homeland!

Ivan stayed perfectly still, listening to the sounds of leather boots. His left hand tightly clenched to the coarse tree trunk and right hand reaching over to the hand grenade tied on his belt—only one left. How he wished he could throw a few, killed them all and rushed into the village to find him!

After everything settled back down to still silence, Ivan jumped out from his hideout and, like a truly experienced infantry scout, cautiously advacing to his home village without delay.

"Yao, you little fool." He complained softly in his heart, "Ivan the Devil already surrendered to you once. Never expect him to give in twice…"

Ivan almost ran into a patrol team; luckily, he dodged into the bushes by a row of houses like an agile cat. This was a great lookout spot: everything could be observed with ease while he himself was hidden in the darkness. The last similarly competent spot was that late autumn afternoon under the Pushkin bronze statue in Moscow park, when he and Wang Yao were pressing so close to each other, peeking over with naïve curiosity to Toris and Natasha standing not faraway from them. The four young people, observing and being observed, were all so young and so beautiful…

Right then, he saw—at the corner of the house on the opposite side—a man lying on the ground. It was Egorov. This former guerilla fighter was discovered here and bled his last drop of blood in the street fight… But where was Yao? That clever, handsome, good-hearted friend who occasionally threw a childly tantrum—where was him?

He couldn't bear the sight of Egorov's body and diverted his sight—then, all the blood inside his body froze in an instant. On top of the hanging pole erected beside him were six bodies swaying in the air like ghostly shadows. He silently repositioned himself to see their faces—these were the six men old gramp Mikhalech mentioned before. The sixth body was his childhood good friend Mishka, betrayed by the other good friend Dimka… The once quiet and modest face was covered with the grayish shade of iron, as if it was sculpted out of a piece of dark wood…

Ivan's heart was also wrapped with a hanging rope, rendering him breathless. But the sky was almost about to light up, so he was forced to find a reliabel hideout spot and go from there. As to where Wang Yao was and in what condition, he had not a clue. All he knew was that he would never leave him behind.

That lovely bright face—sometimes tender and amiable, sometimes solitary and serious—had stamped on his heart since very the first time they met. He didn't even have time to sketch him portrait, how could he imagine this unforgettable face be possibly covered with the shadow of death, like the people on the hanging pole?

"I knew you must be alive, in my tormented homeland of Bereza." uttered Ivan silently to the pitch-dark village at the break of dawn. "No need to answer, because there isn't a person that Ivan can not find…"


	18. Toris and Natashenka

Ch 18 Toris and Natashenka

Natasha couldn't remember how many time she ran to the radio station. The last time there, she threw a temper and grabbed the headphone from hand of the cooperator on duty. Under the headquarter's low ceiling rose her low, begging voice.

"Crane? Crane? This is Snow Field. Please answer if you hear me. Please answer…"

What answered her were the booming sounds of artilleries faraway. At the end, they had to send her out. On the way back to the bunker, she wiped her eyes with the back of her small clenched fists. Droplets of tears froze on her eyelashes, causing her to think that the starlights were splashed down to earth in strands.

The Milky Way of millions of stars was like a trail of brilliant and dazzling footprints, traveling through the clear boundless night sky, disappeared into the distance of nothingness. Natasha stood by the bunker, gazing upon the celestial trail of foot steps for a long time.

"We scouts love the night. Look, the Milky Way in the night sky is the road of us scouts…"

Perhaps, Natasha would never be able to forget those words until the end of her life. But who said those words? Not long ago, under the same magnificent starry sky, the fiercely burning campfire jumped and twirled in agitation, as if to exhaust its minute sadness and joy in its fleeting life. Her gaze was fixed on the campfire and she heard the hoarse voice of Toris Lorinaitis telling his fellow soldiers about stars…

Yes, those were Toris' words. Natasha loved those words, but she didn't love Toris—how could she? Although he was a good scout too… No, the person Natasha admired the most was her brother. When she first learned to braid her own hair, she already followed her brother and his friends playing fighting games in the woods. When she was twelve or thirteen years old, one day, her brother said to her, "Now you're a big girl, Natashenka. Act like a girl." So she put on dresses and bows, and soon noticed those gazes of admiration from other boys. There was no way she would like any of them. Afterall, she was the sister of Vanya Braginsky!

Natasha was applying for music school when the war broke out. Having heard the news that brother was joining the army, she didn't hesitate and immediately ran to the conscription office. But they didn't want her as a scout and, instead, sent her to nursing class. She had secretly shed tears many times for this very reason—scouts were the braviest people in the front afterall! But brother was also a scout, and a cavalry rider too! Thence, Natasha had a very good reason to raise her proud little face once again.

But this time, brother was in the unfamiliar area of infantry scouting mission, and it was also the most difficult kind that required breaking into enemy's rear for prolonged period of time. Ever after that evening when a deafening sound of explosion was heard from the radio station, the "crane" vanished into the boundless sky…There was only the magnificent Milky Way remaining high above like the footprints they left on the snowfield…

If only she could follow these footprints! Then, Natash could overcome all the difficult situations and rescue her brother and other soldiers from unimaginable perils… She was only a nurse without any training, but if an experienced scout could be willing to accompany her, Natasha believed that she could do it for sure. But where could she find such a person? Her admirers were all too many, but if she fell into danger, who could risk everything to save her? Like that day in a sudden air raid, the way she protected little Lovino in her arms—

—Well yes! During the air raid there was such a person, in spite of his coughing, leaping to her side and covering her with his own body, just like how the man of her dream should had done. She had long believed that one day the man of her dream would eventually come. She didn't know his name or face, but he lived inside her heart…

There was only one gas lamp inside the bunker. The small swaying flame reflected in the navy blue eyes of Toris, like a lighthouse on the midnight Baltic Sea, and the snoring sounds of new recruits like the ocean's ceaseless sighs.

Toris reclined on the sleeping board, trying to suppress his coughing. Thanks to the faithful nurse, his cold was close to recovery. On the table, there was the bowl he used to drink his medication a few hours ago—Natasha hurried out after preparing the medication for him. He knew that she was going to the division headquarter's radio station for her brother…

So, Natasha was slightly arrogant and sometimes talked bluntly, but wasn't she still the prettiest, loveliest and finest girl in this world? How could he allow such a girl to have her heart broken?

He blamed himself. If it wasn't that he fell ill in that critical time, he could had gone with the squad. Then, he could keep an eye on his good friend Yao, and Vanya wouldn't need to participate in this ominous mission, and, hence, spare Natasha's worry and dread.

Could it be that whoever received his liking would be destined to fall into misery?

"No, that's not true!" Toris shook his head as if getting rid of the terrible thoughts from his head. "I'm a university student studying astronomy, not a hopeless astrologist of the middle ages. They will return in safety. Everything will be fine…"

He couldn't keep on that positive thought. In the past, he had loved many people. Hadn't they all left him? Life had given so little to this nineteen-year-old man, but had taken away so much from him…

Toris loved his parents, as well as his parents' good frients, the Lukasiewicz family. Nine years ago, in the unforgettable winter day when ten-year-old Toris lied on his parents' new tombs covered with snow, not wanting to get up, it was Feliks Lukasiewicz who reached out his little hand to him, "Come, Toris. Come living with us!"

Polish immigrants, the Lukasiewicz family lived by the shore of the Baltic Sea. Everything about this family couldn't be better: the auntie made the best egg rolls in the world; the uncle had the finest telescope. Many years later when people asked the famous astrophysicist Toris Lorinaitis about his academic life, he would always say, "Everthing began when I was ten years old, on the balcony of the Lukasiewicz family…"

Of course, this family also had the most curious little boy, Feliks. So maybe sometimes that Feliks was a bit self-important, and that he cheated when they played chess, but wasn't he the happiest, the loveliest and the finest boy in the world? Otherwise, why would Toris ran to his bedside and tell him all the lovely things happened of the day?

"Feliks! Feliks! I found a kind of really good ice-cream in the shop on the street corner…"

"Feliks! Feliks! Today uncle said I did a good job with the star chart I made…"

"Feliks! Feliks! Today in the park by the beach, I saw a really cute blond girl. But before I had a second look at her, she's gone…"

Uncle and aunt were joking that Toris fell in love, but only Feliks pouted and howled, stomping the floor, and demanded Toris to swear never mentioning that blonde girl…

Now, in the battlefront thousands of miles away, staring at the flickering light, Toris felt that he was so lonely… Why, out of all possible times, did the Lukasiewicz's choose to visit Warsaw in the eve of its siege? A year later, Toris enrolled Moscow University. He only wanted to leave home to somewhere far far way; staying for even another day in where Feliks lived was unbearable.

He felt suffocating, so he buttoned up the coat and wished to go out for some fresh air.

Below the magnificent starry sky stood Natasha. When he saw her for the first time in Moscow, he thought that she was the little blond girl he met on the beach back home… She lowered her beautiful head and her slim shoulder twitched, the almost indistinguishable sobbing sounded clearly in his ears—Natasha had always been strong and resilient.

"Natasha…" He muttered in sympathy, but quickly regreted it. How could a girl like Natasha be willing to expose her weak side?

But Natasha raised her tearful eyes. The next second, out of Toris' expectation, the girl threw herself into his arms and her face on his shoulder, crying out loud.

"Toris! They will die! I don't want them to die!"

He placed his hand gingerly onto her fine golden hair, and opened his mouth with great effort, "Natasha… Natashenka! I promise you with my whole life's happiness. They will come back…They will come back!"

The girl's crying softened and, after a while, she suddenly broke loose his embrace, wiped away her tears and stared at him with a slightly offended gaze of blame.

"Get back to the bunker! You haven't recovered yet. If you caught something else from the wicked cold, it's not my responsibility!" said she, while trying to maintain that usual indifferent tone. Then she quickly turned around and ran in the direction of the headquarter. Even when she had run afar, Toris could still hear the cracking sound of snow under her boots.


	19. Interrogation

Ch 19 Interrogation

As Wang Yao had his two arms tied behind and escorted to the German commanding office located at a farmhouse, he swore at the bottom of his heart never to answer a word to any questions.

"Calm down, Wang Yao. You must remain calm." as he silently murmured to himself.

But, as the enemies started searching over his body and ripping off his clothes for interrogation and torture, a strong sense of disgust caused his body to experience an irresistible shudder. If it wasn't that his two arms were tied behind, he would had taken off his clothes and show them every pocket himself, just so they wouldn't touch him—before departure, he had already left behind all letters, photos and identifications according to the rules for scouts anyway.

No. In the shirt pocket in front of his chest still hid a most precious thing—the pouch Lerika sewed for him, along with his ecological observation notes written on scrap paper. His memory before the war and his dream of the life afterwards all pressed against that soldier's heart dearly. When the stitches infused with the girl's whole tenderness and affection were ripped open, causing the months' worth of diary to fall on the ground and trampled under army boots, it was then that Wang Yao's heart suddenly began to ache.

When they started to take off his shirt, Wang Yao finally opened his mouth after the long silence:

"Enough!"

The German major who was questioning him apparently knew some Russian and stared at him with mockery, "Are you embarrased? You don't seem to understand your situation. If we don't take them off, they'll stick onto the wounds and give you a hard time."

"Beat me as much as you want." Then, lowered his eyes after he spoke, hidden all emotions behind the bushy eyelashes as not to let them discover his violent feeling of humiliation suppressed deep at heart.

But the sense of humiliation only lasted for a second. A soldier pulled Wang Yao's collar and gave him a fierce slap in the face. Several men of bulky build kicked and thrust, pressing him down onto a bench facing down. The whip made a screeching sound in the air, then ferosciously bit on his back. They thrashed him as they questioned him with icy voice of his name, which troop he belonged to and where his accomplices hid. He lay there without raising his face counting the whipping "…eleven, twelve, thirteen…"

He remembered the location of every single trench, every bundle of bush and every firebase. He remembered every kind face of his comrades. He worried of that German major's mocking eyes, that perhaps could see through his mind of those places and those people. Quick! Think of something else. Yet, the bunker, trenches, old gramp's cabin and Ivan's lonesome figure by the woods all surfaced in his memory.

"…thirty-nine, forty, forty-one, forty-two…"

—How could he not think of them! Ever since he fell into the enemy's hand, that familiar and affable entirety gave him the utmost solace and courage. In the extreme fire-like pain, every trench, every bundle of bush, every firebase and every comrade swirled rapidly before his eyes and inside his heart, eventually overlapped and unified into an image of the tall handsome young man by the woods. Those violet eyes filled with worry and lingering peered right into his heart…

Wang Yao tried even harder to keep his eyes close shut. Now, to him who sank barehanded into the enemy's hand without an inch of steel, his close shut eyelids were the last line of defense; of everything and of that lingering young man in his eyes.

The whipping stopped when he counted sixty. A large hand pulled his sweaty black hair, forcing him to raise his lowered pale face. He opened his eyes defenselessly and saw the major scanning him from up high with obvious loathe and derision.

"I suggest you to think it over. Don't end your own life and hurt someone's heart. You have lover too…"

The major swung something in front of Wang Yao's eyes…it was his cherished pouch made by Lerika, now helplessly hanging down from the enemy's hand.

"You have lover too…"

Lerika's dark brown curvy hair and rosy cheeks flashed in front of his eyes, causing a moment of sweet and bitter pain ringing inside his heart. But the girl's delicate face quickly changed, into something more extensive, more brave and more handsome, like another person he was familiar with. But who was that person? He was nearly muddleheaded from extreme pain and couldn't remember.

"You have lover too…"

He felt that this sentence was as if a call of condolence from faraway, from their own people—the people in the base and in the woods—to tell Wang Yao, that he had loved…

Wang Yao laughed happily.

"Yes, I do have lover…and I love very, very much. So don't expect me to tell you anything…"

The enemy pulled his hair and threw him from the bench onto the ground. The whip was no longer for the questioning now, but more out of an aggravating revenge, smashing onto him frantically. He silently counted until one-hundred-and-twelve when he could see or hear no more. The heavy leather boots that had stomped his ecological notes were fiercely kicking his unconscious body.

When Wang Yao woke up, the sky had lighted up. There seemed to be infinite numbers of little hammers striking madly inside the blood vessels of his temple. The inner layer of shirt and pants were ripped into pieces from the whipping, now stuck onto the wounds that covered his back and limbs, causing tremendous burning pain with every small movement. The icy cold forced him to try surrounding his arms around his body, but the two arms were solidly tied behind by coarse hemp rope.

He knew it clearly. He would not had the strength to escape after the interrogation, even if he wasn't tied up. Then why did they tie him up anyway and locked him inside this bleaky cold storage room?

Because they feared him. When he was still the free flying "white crane" on the snow field, the German soldiers in the Rogachevo—Bereza region talked about the "white ghost" with hatred and dread. When he was isolated and besieged, he finished off three men with great precision before a few more went up together and disarmed him. Even when he was interrogated as a captive, they didn't know what to do with him.

"Who would've thought that you end up like this." The bitten lips stretched into a cynical smile. He, Wang Yao, the best scout at taking captives, could had fallen into the terrible state such as this! But he could had escaped! He parted with Egorov and quickly found out the farm house in which the command center located in. But just as he was about to turn back, the firing sound from the end of the village told him that Egorov encountered the Germans. Wang Yao had no choice but to hide himself in the bush behind the commanding center and decided to retrieve after the commotions. In fact, the German soldiers running out of the commanding center could never had thought that he was in the very heart of their area.

—If it wasn't a scream of a young woman, the enemies would never had found him! Perhaps, some silly girl of the village caught sight of him by accident, screamed without thinking and forfeited his chances. No, he could had fleed even then. Just step away and throw that hand grenade tied on his belt into the commanding center and all the smoke and chaos from explosion could entirely cover his escape.

But he didn't do that. He wouldn't do that if given him another chance… When he was out scouting, he saw the owners of this farmhouse—an old couple of some fifty years old in the yard holding each other's arms. The lady prayed with a whispering voice, "Almighty and gracious Lord, please have mercy on this old mother's heart and bring the children home safe and sound. My Tonya, Vanya and Natasha…" The old man comforted her in a low voice, "The children are going to be fine. If they came home and found out their mother blinded her eyes from crying, they would be heartbroken. Come, let's go inside and work. Who could've helped that the Germans picked us Braginsky's as their base…"

No, he couldn't blow up the commanding center and thus gave up his last chance of retrieve.

"I'm not a good scout afterall..."


	20. Lerika

Ch 20 Lerika

"My home is ShanGanNing*, and I am a good girl of this home. Riding white horse, carrying my gun, wearing an iris flower on my hair…"

Little sister Chunyan jumped around him, joyously singing a tune she just learned. A freshly picked iris flower was braided into her pigtails, loveliest thing in the world. His sister turned around like a little fairy, then suddenly her black pigtails turned into chestnut and the iris into geranium flower, "Let me tell your fortune and you'll be guaranteed to find a good lover." He regretfully declined because he was heading to the front. Everyone else had relatives and friends seeing them off excpet him. He felt sorry for himself when suddenly a girl more beautiful than Chang'e* goddess descended from the sky and tucked a delicate pouch into his hand with eyes full of tears. He mustered up the courage to kiss her when suddenly a burst of smoke whirled away the girl and the pouch, leaving between heaven and earth only eyes of tremendous pain. The violet ones seemed to be of Vanya's and the dark ones—those were mother's eyes…

"Mama…" Wang Yao murmured.

The old mama knelt down beside him, putting his head on her knees. Warm fingers brushed through his messy black hair and put cool water to his dry cracked lips. And then, all the pain vanished. Only mama had such power…

"From your look, you're not a child from around here, arent' you?" asked the mama with a voice heard by only the two of them. Before he replied, she continued as if talking to herself, "But I know you're a good kid. How could they have beaten you like that! I could hear it from the kitchen…How old are you? About the age of my Vanya—no, no, about my Natasha's age at most. I dreamed for my babies to come home, day and night. I dreamed and dreamed, only to have a bunch of thieves coming. The commander and his mistress take the house, me and the old man have to wait on them. Alas, if only that woman was a German! But she's a Russian girl…"

"Mama, good mama." Wang Yao called out gratitude in his heart as he drank the water greedily. Then, he heard some shouting from outside. After a moment, the guard sent old mama Braginsky out. A luxuroiusly dressed young woman entered the room in quick steps with her head low and shut the door behind her.

The whole world swirled in front of his eyes into sullen gloom. There was as if a red hot iron stamping a mark of her lovely face onto his heart.

"Why was it you…" She threw herself on him, her teary blue eyes gazing at him, like the way when she rushed to the train station and tucked the sweat-soaked pouch from her squeezing little hand into his.

"Why was it you…Lerika?" He mindlessly repeated her words until that flower-like name rushing out of his mouth did he came to his senses from a throbbing pain in his chest. He even attempted to sit up, to place the knees before his chest as to prevent her from seeing his ragged clothes and body of bruises…

"Why was it you?" She sobbed softly, "I just saw that pouch on the table. If I knew it was you, I would never had screamed when I saw the shadow behind the house last night…"

He had his eyes wide-open like a blind man, trying to comprehend every word coming out of that little mouth. But her words were like a cluster of flies, buzzing around his ears and making his head dizzy and eyes dazzled—"Yao, you don't need to worry that someone might hear us. I lied to Mr. Fritz, ah, no, the major that I could let you talk. So he allowed me in. He always listens to me—" then, she suddenly noticed Wang Yao's expression and quickly changed, "—he's out for some work. The guards don't know Russian. You can say whatever you want…"

"…What else could I say?" said him laboredly. Whether it was the injuries or the coldness, that deep brown curly hair and rosy cheeks blurred in his vision. However, in a split second he suddenly remembered the heroic stories of espionage agents. Then, he struggled up bearing the stabbing pain and moved his body towards her.

"Tell me, Lerika…that you are a scout like me; but, only that your task is more dangerous. You are working within...right? Is that right? Please answer me…"

Hearing his earnest, almost begging words, Lerika forced a bitter smile, twisting her slim fingers uneasily, "Why would I lie to you…I'm the most ordinary person. How could I have the courage to fight…"

"…But why are you with that major…He beat you? Or did he threaten your family?"

Lerika suddenly covered her face with both hands—when she felt sad at school, she would act in such way. In the everlasting dizziness that haunted him, if it wasn't that his both hands were tied back, he would almost gingerly pat that slender shoulder and say something comforting to make her laugh, like they did back then in school.

From between her fingers escaped the hoarse, repressed voice.

"Nobody made me. I did it voluntarily… I was in Rogachevo to visit relatives, but the Germans came… Life wasn't easy and, I thought, maybe there would be some support by staying with them. It has been two months…"

Cold, dizziness, anxiousness and severe pain from the wounds all vanished in a flash. Wang Yao was calm. No hatred, no disgust, just boundless emptiness and indifference.

He moved his body so he could sit with his back against the wall. Even though this movement could only bring more pain, he could no longer feel it.

"You sold me out voluntarily, silly girl."

If it wasn't this silly girl's screaming last night, he could had safely returned with Vanya to their own people. When he was tortured by this silly girl's German lover, he was actually missing her. It was her who danced waltz with him at the prom night. It was her who sang "Katyusha" as she seeing him off to the front that made him into believing himself as the soldier guarding the lovely girl, like in the song. It was her who gave him the handmade pouch in teary eyes that he used to save his precious diary and kept in front of his chest. It was her face wandering in his heart that when Vanya's image dashed into his heart, he even felt guilty to her!

"Vanya…Vanya! Forgive me!" he said with a faint, almost undetectable voice, then lowered his eyes.

* * *

><p>ShanGanNing: An abbreviation of an area of mid-west China comprising of the provinces of Shan'xi, Gansu and Ningxia.<p>

Chang'e: Goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology. She was a woman on earth, one day stole her husband's elixor of life and flew to the moon. She regreted it terribly but was foreverly bound on the moon, living eternal life of loneliness.


	21. A Silly Girl

Ch 21 A Silly Girl

Wang Yao couldn't hear Ivan's reply excpet Lerika's broken words repeating in his ears. "Last night I saw that shadow and I was so frightened… how could I have thought it was you… I'm just staying with Mr. Fritz. I never sold out any other people to him…"

"You only sold out two people." still hiding himself behind those long eyelashes, "Me, and yourself."

"I've always known there's something great in you, but me…I'm just the most ordinary girl. You see, this is what I thought before the war: graduate, work, and then marry to…" Lerika hurriedly casted a tender glance of misery at him between her fingers and swallowed that unspoken word. "…marry to…a good man, bear him children and live a simple peaceful life. I wouldn't think of anything else, Yao…I'm scared of fighting…But when the war came, it's all ruined…"

"You ruined it with your own hands, silly girl!" He suddenly opened the black and white eyes, "When your own people come back, life will start over again. By then, if they asked you what you were doing during the war, how do you respond?"

"But where are you?" the girl raised her red tearful eyes, "Why haven't you come yet? This place is occupied for months. It was livable at first, but how can anyone keep sufferring like this? Yes, I'm a weak person and I can't stand the suffering, but what is there for me to believe that you people will eventually come?"

Until then, Lerika noticed his arms tied back by the coarse rope were covered with whipping marks. She reached out her hands to untie him. The second her fingertip touched him, his body twitched as if being biten.

"Don't touch me. It'll only hurt me more."

But Lerika didn't hear what he said. She jumped to the door and listened intently to the sound outside. "Mr. Fritz is back." She turned back to him, whisperring into his ears. The fragrance from her face almost made him shudder, "I'm going to beg him now, to release you…He always listens to me!" Her voice contained a child-like naiveness and rejoice.

Wang Yao turned away his face.

"Silly girl. So you don't understand war afterall…How silly!"

"What are you saying…" Lerika stared at him with a pale face, "I want to save you…The sun is setting. By then, they will hang you at the end of the village…"

"Listen to me, Lerika. For the sake that I have carried around the pouch you made for me—go outside and bring me my uniform. I want to die like a soldier…"

When she sobbed and hurried out of the door, boundless dizziness along with cold and extreme pain got hold of him once again.

"I'm going to die." He said to himself in Chinese.

Death. When he uttered that dreadful word in his mother tongue, a sudden rush of hot tears almost suffocated him. For a moment, he couldn't bear it and hid his face between his knees.

From the day he volunteered to the front, he told himself to stare death in the face. In fact, back then, he never believed that he would die. Dying at eighteen—how cruel, how absurd and how unimaginable! But, today when the sun set, he would be rushed over to the gibet at the end of the village, joining into the heavy darkness and nonbeing. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, Rogachevo—Bereza region would be back to the hands of their own people, and the village would also welcome their son Ivan Braginsky. Maybe that pair of artistic hands could set him free from the gibet. And this foreign land could bring him into its deep embrace. Like a family.

No, it didn't matter to him anymore. He shall use this last bit of time to think about the people he missed. Think about mother and sister, think about Toris and Natasha, think about "General" Elizaveta, think about all the friends he had in China and Russia, think about…Vanya. These kind and tender faces brought serenity to his mind. And so he raised his head, just seeing mama Braginsky walking in.

"Good boy, let me warm up these clothes on fire. They're thrown out on the snow for a day, frozen solid…"

"No, good mama." He tiredly smiled to her, "I don't feel cold anymore. Just put them on like this. I don't have much time."

The old mama silently knelt down beside him and untied the rope. His arms were numb and senseless from the rope and coldness. She put him in her arms like an infant still in his swaddle, and put on the frozen hard winter jacket on him with great care.

"I could only get the jacket and the pants. They took the boots and the coat. What wouldn't they take? Even my daughter Natasha's favorite fur coat was taken away and givent to that mistress." Her voice was filled with outrage, tears rolling down her aging face. "I ran into that wicked girl. She wanted to bring you the clothes and I grabbed them! Did she think she's worthy of touching them? And her eyes look like she cried. One day, we'll teach her to cry! We'll let her regret it a hundred times! Why didn't they finish her off then?"

"Good mama…please say no more…"

When he was escorted by three Nazi soldiers out of the farm house, walking in his frozen uniforms, bare-footed, onto the snowy road, the sunglow was about to sink into the sullen night. Wang Yao remembered the first time he met Ivan. It was an evening, too. Ivan riding on Kostya's back, galloped towards him—oh, the golden rider and the golden steed…

Ice chips on the road abraded the bottom of his feet like broken glass, but he didn't feel the cold nor the pain. Only profound dizziness continued torturing him. Hurry. Hurry to the hanging pole—only not passing out on the road to let the enemy think that he fainted from fright! This road leading to the end of his life was exactly the one where little boy Vanya learned to walk, went to school and into the woods to play. Right here at this moment, he felt as if Ivan's entire childhood and adolescent years were gazing upon him on both sides of the road, to see what kind of person he was in front of the most severe test.

Hurry, hurry. Go around the bush at the corner and it would be the hanging pole. He felt relieved—but please do not pass out from the sense of relief! Even with these last few steps, he must walk over with his own two feet.

When they just turned the corner, a silver light of dagger coming from the obscure bush flashed through, and the three soldiers fell on the ground without even a sound of cry. His already numb body sensed a solid warm hug. The string tightened at his heart snapped a crisp sound. He finally passed out.


	22. Vanechka

Ch 22 Vanechka

Ivan rarely spoke of that evening to other people. It sounded entirely fictional. Without firing a bullet (to avoid alerting the enemy), he dared to use only a dagger killing three German soldiers before they even realized! After that, he had to carry this unconscious little guy running like a mad man towards the woods outside the village. Oh, the road leading to the woods—to little boy Vanya, it was short enough to be disregarded, but in that unforgetable night, he felt that it had no end.

In his military life afterwards, Ivan made many accomplishments, but that death-defying night never happened again. Because there would never be another person with body covered with wounds, walking barefooted across his heart. There would never be another person with those black and white eyes, looked at him through his hazy eyes and fell into his arms.

When he almost got into the woods, suddenly siren, men's shoutings and approaching footsteps of large crowd emerged from the village. "Into the woods!" the lead man yelled, causing Ivan's slightly unwound heart to tense up again—that was the voice of Dimka. For the invader's rewards, that man had sent his childhood friend Mishka to the hanging pole with his own hand, and now was leading them to hunt for the other good friend Vanya.

Unprecedented bitterness from despair covered Ivan's heart—whoever had played in the woods all knew the numerous hideout places! Let alone Dimka who was often on Vanya's side…

"Who the hell's on your ratbag's side!" Ivan swore in low voice. Just then, he remembered a last hideout spot—back then, none of his little buddies, however smart and cunning, were able to find him there—and, with a child's selfishness, he kept this secret from everyone. But how could he had known that it would save the lives of him and his beloved one many years later!

"Let Mishka be hanging from the gibet! Let Egorov be lying at the end of the village! Let Yao be tortured to his last breath! And let me carry him hiding around from you! Everyone's end will be better than yours! Yell! Search! Lead the invaders and have the time of your life on your own land! When we push back to Bereza, I'll be the first one finishing you off." Ivan ducked into his last hideout, immersing his whole body and heart in tremendous hatred. "By then, you will die a tombless death! Bereza's soil will not contain you…"

He felt that he was the last son of the Russian land, carrying the last gun and guarding the last beachhead*on the ground; and the entire hope of this ventured battle was quietly lying in his arms.

With an extremely rare tenderness known to himself, Ivan gingerly placed Wang Yao on his crossed legs, unbuttoned and carefully removed the solidly-frozen jacket from Wang Yao's body, pressed that cold stiff body into his warm arms, wrapped the military coat around them and buttoned up. The series of action only took a short time, but long enough to identify the countless wounds underneath the ragged shirt that was barely able to cover.

The scene of Wang Yao's childish gesture as he was changing clothes in gramp Mikhalech's cabin abruptly resurfaced in his mind, causing his heart to experience a thrusting pain. He softly rubbed Wang Yao's bloodless face with his own.

"Oh you…" his lip pressing close to Wang Yao's ear, "How on earth could you bear it… "

Only right then with Wang Yao lying in his arms did he realize how small the man was, almost like infant sleeping in the cradle. The head of black hair leaned on his left shoulder and the lovely face buried on his neck. He surrounded his left arm under the coat to hug the other's body and the right hand on the other side was gently rubbing that pair of cold naked feet. As to Wang Yao's hands—they were being thoughtfully pressed against his warm chest.

Ivan couldn't wrap up the wounds for the man in his arms, thus, warming up this frozen stiff body was all he could do at this moment. He huffed hot air on that cold face, "I know that you would only feel pain when you woke up, but please don't keep sleeping…" prayed him near the other's lips, "Maybe in your sleep, the cruel torment continued? But if you wake up and see me, you will know that all those things are over…"

As to reassure the unconscious man, Ivan reached in his left hand from the lower hem of the ragged shirt, gently stroking that lean but flexible waist to transmit his presence and warmth to Wang Yao. He dared to do so because he didn't feel any wounds on the left side.

Then, he saw the long elegant brows frowned slightly, the bushy eyelashes quivered violently and a vague sound of apparent painful moan leaked out from that red swollen lips. Ivan was rattled. He pulled up the coat in a fluster and lifted Wang Yao's shirt—beneath the seemingly intact skin was a huge dark purple bruise left from the kickings of military boots. His heart was torn and, without knowing if the man could hear, repeated in low voice over and over:

"I didn't know…Forgive me…"

At this moment, he saw that pair of horse-like dark round eyes gradually opened.

"It's you…Vanya! Vanechka…"

How many times had this name been called by parents, sisters, friends and relatives! But at the moment, it was as if he heard it for the first time in his life. Ivan could barely suppress the urge of passionately kissing that endearing face and reached out one hand to brush away that strand of black hair stuck on the forehead from cold sweat. Then he placed that hand firmly on Wang Yao's face,

"It's me. I am here and you are in my arms…They could never find us…" He was like a child just learned to speak, whispering into Wang Yao's ear with utmost fervour, "But I can always find you…When they beat you, I knew that you were in my house. The thrashing could be heard on the road…I even counted." His voice paused for a second as though to suppress something. "I waited for a whole day until evening when I finally got the chance to steal you back…"

"You didn't listen to me afterall." Wang Yao's frail voice interrupted him, "I told you, if there's something wrong, go back immediately…"

He suddenly raised his head, the violet eyes staring at the dark round ones with blame and worry,

"Ivan the devil already gave in to you once. Never expect him to give in again."

He saw Wang Yao taking a deep breath, almost as to gather up his entire strength and try posing a serious face,

"But you also ended your way out...How do you take me along? Listen to me, good Vanechka…leave me here and go by yourself…"

Wang Yao couldn't finish because the words were blocked by Ivan's hand. He softly covered his left hand on Wang Yao's mouth just enough to prevent him from speaking. He saw that pair of dark round eyes suddenly enlarged and the man in his embrace struggled to break loose of his captivity.

—But how could you have the strength! That frightened and helpless look fell into Ivan's eyes and filled him with amusement and pained sympathy. His hand did't back off. Wang Yao's hurried breaths rushed onto his fingers, as if hugging to the softest spot of his heart as well. His gaze became deep and solemn. The gesture originally was to playfully punish Wang Yao, now turning into deep tenderness and torment.

He saw something flickering in the eyes of the man in his arms, and—with that—a tiny kiss captured in his palm. A flush of tenderness welling up his heart told him: Wang Yao gave in to him.

He removed his hand and fixed his warm lips onto the others, indulging in fervent kisses.


	23. Their Own People

Ch 23 Their Own People

When Ivan finally wished to end this kiss, he raised his head wanting to have a good look at the person in his arms, but Wang Yao who was meekly receiving his kisses now burried his face deeply in the other's chest.

So he followed Wang Yao's lowered head, adhering his lips beside Wang Yao's red burning ears.

"My dark-eyed little fool. My naughty little white horse!"

So what if this naughty little white horse didn't wish Ivan to see his face for the moment? Ivan's whole chest could feel that face clinging against his heart, seperated by only a thin layer of shirt. This face had long since turned into a living portrait, painted into his heart with all the moments of their converging paths; but, his hands couldn't picture it on the paper all along.

Because his heart was not so generous. It was not willing to share the most beautiful thing it cherished to the palette, paper, brush or even his own two hands.

When Ivan heard the enemy had left the woods returning back to the village, he carried Wang Yao out of their hideout and rushed to the ranger's cabin. And what set before his eyes struck him lightheaded—it seemed that Dimka couldn't lead the enemy to Ivan, but found gramp Mikhalech who was looking after the injured lieutenant Kaletin in the cabin, so they mercilessly shot them both.

"Two more on his debt…" Ivan pronounced word by word. He felt his shirt was wetted with warmth, so he freed one hand to gently lift Wang Yao's burried face and kissed those tearful close shut eyelids.

"I'm taking you back right now."

Then, by the dim stove that was about to go out, he picked up the military coat that Wang Yao took off before entering Bereza and patched up by old gramp, carefully wrapping Wang Yao inside. He couldn't find any extra boots, so he got out two sturdy scarves and wrapped them around Wang Yao's naked feet. After that, he buttoned up his jacket, put on his coat and carried this delicate little body in front of his chest, striding into the woods which were suffused with navy night haze.

When he walked to the other end of the woods, preparing to return to the base, Ivan turned around to this sleeping majestic world made of shadows, snow holes and black coniferous branches and nodded in salutation. This was his own woods. When he carried his beloved one, chased by traitor and had nowhere to hide, the woods of homeland did not betray him. Once upon a time in the peaceful years, the woods watched him growing up. And now in the abominable days of foreign occupation, he was no longer the master of this woods, but still its brave and faithful son.

"I will strike back." His voice wasn't loud but clear and forceful. "Because I'm a man of happiness—whatever I wish to do can all be done."

He wished to be an artist, so he got into the art academy; he wished to ride horses, so he learned to ride; he wished to rescue Wang Yao, so he did that, too. Now, he wished to carry his beloved one back to their own people—and so he certainly would.

Many years later, Ivan couldn't even remember if they had encountered enemy's hunts around on their way back—even if they did, perhaps it was overcame by some inconceivable forces. He only remembered himself carrying Wang Yao in his arms, walking on the endless snowfield. He also remembered the stars that night were like infinite number of sparkling eyes.

At the distant horizon where their own people located, the light blue snowfield was as though mingled into the sapphire-blue night sky into one. In the snowfield, Ivan's two feet left a long trail of footprints that belonged to the two of them. The splendid Milky Way above their heads was also like a trail of footprints spreaded by countless stars, in the whereabouts of the highest and the furthermost, extending into the front, to the direction of their own people.

"Vanya…Vanechka!"

He paused his footsteps and Wang Yao was peering at him. From those night-like dark eyes reflected glorious stars. He suppressed the urge to kiss the small starry sky in his arms and sped up his steps.

"Keep talking, I'm listening."

"Do you remember that night…the night when you came over to our side, Toris was talking about the stars…"

"I do. He said that the night belonged to us scouts. The Milky Way in the sky is the road of scouts."

"Vanechka, do you know what I'm thinking about? Please don't laugh at me… There are so many scouts fighting for the cause of justice, and so many footprints they will leave behind… But I think, whether they have lost their lives or not, those footprints will all become stars in the sky, and formed the Milky Way…"

"I thought the same way as you." Ivan smiled, "Look at the Milky Way, it's extending to the direction of our own people. "

"In there are Pavlik, Sasha, Kareshev, Egorov, lieutenant Kaletin…"

"And you, and me…"

Stars listened to their conversations for the whole night. When they returned to their own people, all the stars closed their tired eyes.

People hurried tending Wang Yao, preparing to send him to the military hospital. Ivan reported to the headquarter about the squad's activity and politely refused the division commander's order of letting him rest in defence. He was very proud of catching up with the scheduled time of counterstrike.

"Like I said in the woods." He said to himself as he packed, "When I bring Yao back, I'll turn around and strike back. This time, I'm going back to the village as a master. I shall watch and carry out everything that's about to happen—of how the ones alive shall get happiness and of how the ones lost their lives shall be burried in peace. The ones going to die tombless shall be sent to the end they deserve."


	24. At the Military Hospital

Ch 24 At the Military Hospital

Winter roads at the front were always like this—the black soil turned inside out from beneath the ice and snow by bombing was quickly ground into muddy bumps by tank tracks and countless pairs of military boots. The trucks of military hospital were driving along this exceedingly muddy path following behind the major troops.

The tortured wounds on his back forced Wang Yao to lie head down on the stretcher for the most time. He was more relaxed than other injured soldiers, always staying inside the medical tent as being told to, or transferring with their truck. He crossed both arms on the pillow as to slightly elevate his body, looking upon the land which was occupied not so long ago but had been taken back by their own people. His heart was suffused with a tender but malencholic tranquility, causing him to often lose himself into the hazy and obscure oblivion like an infant.

When the truck drove by the woods of Bereza, a hot flush of blood poured from his heart up to his face. For a moment, he didn't know what to think, so he dived his face into his crossing arms. But a small naughty voice in his head kept reminding him of that night, when Ivan reluctantly removing the indulging lips from his, he was so shy and bewildered and burried his steaming hot face in Ivan's chest, making him looked like he was being quite forward.

"Was I not weak enough that night?" Wang Yao blamed himself with shame, his face still burried inbetween two arms. He felt that what tossed him up and down was not the bumpy truck driving on muddy road, but an emotion interwoven with sweetness, trepidation, melancholy and powerlessness. It surrounded him tightly like Ivan's embrace that night. He could not struggle.

For a long time, he had always been struggling. It was exactly what he said to himself during the mission: the big devil sneaked into his heart and unfolded the softest part that he had tried to conceal since he joint the army. Eventually, that night when Ivan's hand covered his mouth with all his tenderness and affection but stubbornly unyielding, he gave in.

"I am loving…" he remembered how he replied to the German major and smiled happily like he did during the interrogation.

When December was going away, the battleline had been pushed forward afar. In the past ten days since the important triumph, both sides fell back into a stalemate. And so, the military hospital resided in a place some twenty kilometers away from the troops.

Compared to those who were knocked over by land mine, shot by bullets or blasted by artilleries, his torture wounds weren't that severe afterall. And thanks to his good health, the head nurse claimed in a recent dressing change that he could go back to his unit after three days. "You're in love, aren't you? Little guy?" the head nurse asked him abruptly. Wang Yao asked her why she said so with embarrassment and she winked at him proudly as a woman who knew every nuance of this sort of problems. "Because you look like drunk these days. If it wasn't that I couldn't smell alcohol from you, I would almost tell the chief physician on you."

Since he was sent to the military hospital, Wang Yao only drank once, out of a symbolistic gesture. It was two days ago when an army chief came and awarded him a medal: due to significant contribution of the "crane" in reoccupying the Rogachevo—Bereza region, all living and deceased members of the squad received awards. According to army's tradition, Wang Yao must put the medal inside the vodka and bottom up. "Drink, young man. Hope this won't be the last one."

Wang Yao cautiously drank this vodka of remarkable significance. The medal's sharp corners touched his lips and reminded him of his first time drinking vodka: he was embarrasingly choked, Ivan tried very hard not to laugh and pat his back to help him breathe…

Wang Yao walked out of the tent, near him lied an oak tree torn upside down by bomb. He swept away the snow on the trunk and sat on it. He discovered a heart shape etched on the bark and on the inside were two squiggly letters of "И" and "Я"*.

Perhaps in the peaceful times before this war, a happy couple came here and probably believed as they may that love would last as long as this oak tree, thus carved the first letters of each other's name on the bark. Wang Yao stared at this small mark for a long time, as if dreaming, until a handful of snow melted from his squeezing palm dripping through his fingers.

"Va—nya!"

He heard someone calling.

"Va—nya!"

He didn't raise his head, only his eyes still gazing in deep trance at the two letters beneath the glistering snow water.

"Comrade, have you seen Vanya?" he heard the voice was of a nurse from the hospital. "Vanya Timofeev, the guy with shoulder wounds. I don't know where he wandered off this early morning."

"There are too many people called Vanya in Russia." anwered him mindlessly. The nurse grumbled something and left, but he could still hear her loud voice calling, "Va—nya! Where on earth are you?"

"Va—nya!" he called out inside his heart. "Vanya! Where on earth are you? Have you really existed?"

It was around this time that Natasha came. She was here to run some errands and to visit Wang Yao on the way. He invited her to sit on the tree trunk—and discovered that she looked especially radiant with joy today. As he recalled, Natasha was a serious girl—but as she laughed at this moment, she looked so much like her good humoured brother.

Natasha had good reasons to be happy. First, her brother returned safely from the inauspiscious mission and was awarded. Second, her hometown was reoccupied—she even went home and spent a short time with her papa and mama. Third, the superior approved her brother's application of transferring to the infantry unit—without his steed, rider Braginsky qualified himself as a scout with his performance in the mission.

Wang Yao quietly listened to the girl's enthusiastic report until Natasha mentioned that German major and his mistress with plain dirision that his face suddenly changed.

"Natasha, dear girl, can we please not talk about that?"

"Then we won't. I almost forgot the most important thing—to send you regards from everyone of the infantry reconnaissance unit." She snatched a piece of neatly folded paper from her pocket and put it into his hand, continued with some slight ridicule, "This is the star chart drawn by that smart astronomer of ours. It's the stars of the night when brother and you returned…"

"Has Toris recovered from his cold?" asked Wang Yao as he gratefully studied his friend's elaborate and professional strokes.

"He was suddenly fine the night you returned! He was so certain that the stars that night were of good fortune and made this out and asked me to bring it to you. He said that it would bless you to return to the base in time, but who would've thought you recovered so quickly!" Natasha laughed out loud like a little girl. The unusual sight startled Wang Yao, "Universty student of astronomy? He's more like a superstitious astrologist from the middle ages to me!"

"Natasha!" said Wang Yao with a serious face, "You know, Toris is a great guy…"

"There are lots of great guys. Brother. you. Everywhere at the front there are great guys."

"But there's only one who consider you as his loved one…"

Natasha suddenly got up. She was playing with her blonde braids uneasily and the small beautiful face tensed up like the Queen of Spade.

"Let me ask you…a person's words and acts in the most vulnerable moment…do they count?"

Wang Yao was astonished, his eyes became obscure in an instant, "Wasn't I vulnerable enough that night?" He didn't even notice when Natasha left.

But Natasha didn't hitchhike back to the base immediately. She mindlessly wandered outside the hospital, the tips of her braids were sweat soaked in her restless hands.

The loved one! The loved one! Wang Yao mentioned it to her just now. Not long ago when she was most upset and vulnerable, she thought about it herself too. And it seemed that she even buried herself in Toris' arms with tears and all. Well, whoever offered those arms to her, that awkward behavior was undignified for her composure.

These hassles only brought headaches. Then she shall stop thinking about it and have some fun! Natasha was always good at enjoying herself. So she hummed a cheerful tune, placed her hands on her waist, tapped her heels, twirled nimbly, artfully raised her beautiful head, eyes swept across the imaginary audience, and started dancing a dance she learned before the war.

How much she put on airs in daily life was as much as how sincere and childly when she danced. It was as if she was not sufferring in the front, but living as how she planned out before the war, already getting into the music school. She had all planned out. Wang Yao would return to their troop on December 31. It was right around new year and maybe they would have a celebration. By then, she could bring out the dance she practiced today and let everyone see what a nice girl she was…

She even felt that her destined loved one already came to her side, dancing with her. So, at the end of the dance, she decided to add a move from duo—reaching out one hand like a haughty queen, waiting for the imaginary knight to kiss the back of her hand.

It was perfection—only that she heard a loud laughing in despair—the head nurse leaned on the tent, laughing breathlessly with her hands covering her stomach.

"Ha ha ha! Our Natashenka is showing off her favorite act! Oh dear Juliet, who's the Romeo of your heart?"

Natasha regreted over and over afterwards: she should had rolled her eyes at the head nurse and left in dignity. But when she heard "Romeo", her face blushed irresistibly. In the mischievous laughings of nurses and soldiers, she ran to the road, stopped a car heading to the front and flee the scene.

* * *

><p>*: Ivan and Yao's names are spelled as "Иван" and "Яо".<p> 


	25. Return

Ch 25 Return

"I hate to release you." said the head nurse as she straightened up the new uniform on Wang Yao. "Out of all the patients, you gave me a peace of mind. You don't complain about the pain, or swear at people…or roll cigarettes behind my back. Ach, I'm almost in love with you!"

The head nurse was around ten years older than him, like a big sister, and she always poked fun of him when they talked. To hide the embarrassement, Wang Yao tried to divert his attention to the image in the mirrior. Half a year without mirror, he looked thinner than before. The contour of his face hardened and there even grew a line between two eyebrows—what else did the frontline lifestyle bring to him? Could it be a faint ironic smile on his face…

"But breaking a couple is just not me. Your sweetheart would be so heartbroken." the head nurse proudly declared, then secretively drew closer to him. "Let me guess, your sweetheart is probably in the army! These days you always stare blankly in the direction of the front, was it a lovely nurse? Maybe that girl Natasha?"

At first, Wang Yao felt embarrassed about the first half of the sentence, but hearing the last part, he couldn't hold back his amusement, "If that was the case, a lot of people's hearts would be broken."

"Then tell that silly girl: don't be so pretentious! She clearly wants to be in love, but won't admit it! Seize the day and enjoy while she can!" sighed the nurse, "Who knows how long this war is going to be. Youth is short…"

Even when Wang Yao got on the truck, the head nurse's words still chased his ears. Who was those words intended for? Anyway, he wouldn't tell Natasha about that—he didn't want to be on the receptive end of her knife-like piercing look of reproach.

As the truck drove to one kilometer away from their unit, he hopped down. He ran towards them, couldn't hold back the excitement of reuniting with his fellow soldiers after the prolonged parting. Everyone yelled "ura" in exhilaration, eagerly hugged him and threw their hats up to the sky. "You pick a great day to come back! There's no mission these days anyway, why don't we celebrate our 1942 at night!"

After he finally accepted everybody's greetings, it was almost noon. The only person he didn't see was that Ivan Braginsky who claimed to have transferred to their infantry unit. But Wang Yao knew where to find him. "Whoever Wang Yao wished to find can all be found!" said to himself, mimicking Ivan's typical tone.

The field of Russia was never short of magnificent and beautiful forest!

Wang Yao loved the forest, because he loved biology. Ivan Braginsky also loved forest, because he was the son of the forest.

When Wang Yao stepped into the poplar woods, and there, he saw him.

Ivan was sitting under a tall white poplar tree, his back against the trunk and a piece of paper on top a cardboard lying on his legs. He was drawing intently with a small piece of pencil. Cold and clear sunlight climbed over layers of branches and rained down to him from the dazzling blue winter sky, falling onto his light blonde hair and turning it into warm amber and honey. As if the sunlight was answering the nature's pleading, it decended from up high and crowned this beautiful god-like man.

Wang Yao quietly stood behind another tree. What he was seeing was the face of concentration leaning before the drawing paper with a hint of smile—the one Wang Yao saw in the hospital's mirror this morning.

In his earliest memory, there was also a piece of woods under the sun. It was his grandmother's funeral when he was two or three years old. He couldn't remember his grandmother's face or the relatives' crying, but the treetops swaying above the graveyard, rustling and gleaming, remained in his memory forever. While nature presented him death, it also showed him life's extraordinary enchantment. Years later at this very moment, he felt the sunlight on Ivan was rushing towards him like a stream, poured into his chest and turned into a pair of wings coming out beneath his shoulder blades. Like a gift nature granted to the young child—the gift of eternal youth and life. And it was exactly this "forest god" young man who single-handedly grabbed his youthful life from death…

Right then, the "forest god" put aside the drawing board and got up unhurriedly:

"My naughty little white horse, who long are you planning to hide there?"

All of a sudden, Wang Yao felt like a child being caught of his fault. He tried to maintain a soldier's stance and walked towards Ivan, but discovered nowhere to place his confounded hands—so he cleared his throat like all the big men did before talking. Chit chat about their parting? Thank him for saving his life? Nothing seemd appropriate. Ever since Ivan carried him back in his arms, he couldn't find anything deemed "appropriate".

A happy little spark jumped in Ivan's eyes:

"The medic tent isn't a suitable place to live afterall!" Ivan laughed loudly, "All your scouting skills are gone. You thought you could sneak up on me, but I sensed it the moment you came here!"

His words stirred up Wang Yao's discontent and playfulness. To prove himself as a competent scout all the same—and also to practice on someone after his long rest—Wang Yao grabbed Ivan's shoulder, planning to "teach him a lesson". But the surrounding whirled in front of his eyes and he discovered that the person been thrown on the ground was himself.

Maybe it shouldn't be called a throw, since Ivan's shoulder and arms had always carefully surrounded Wang Yao's back to prevent him from touching the cold hard ground. Then, Ivan held his back and legs and swung his body into his arms, like the way he carried him back in the snow field.

"Apologies to you. You still got some stuff." whispered the grinning man into his ears. The warm breath gave him a shudder, "But don't you forget that I can catch captive too!"

As the body sank into the broad solid arms, suddenly all the trees bursted out green leaves and behind all the new leaves echoed the bird chirps, whistling at Wang Yao's ears like twirling wind. He lay there absent-minded for a second until hearing the word "captive", then instantly blushed in anger and shame. Without a word, he tried to break loose of Ivan's clampdown, but found out that this embrace was more forceful than he imagined.

"You're like a grizzly bear!" he finally opened his mouth and complained. "Where'd you get all the strength!"

"You were wounded that night." Ivan lowered his head looking at him, "But now you know. Even if you're fully recovered, you still can't get away."

The unreasonable tone along with a hint of ridicule really annoyed Wang Yao. Just as he was attempting to break loose with all his strength, Ivan looked at him straight in the eyes and pronounced word by word:

"If you keep behaving like this, I'll carry you back to the base right now."

"If you dare, then don't expect me to ever talk to you again."

"Ah~ah~" Ivan stretched his voice, staring at him with mockery. "Then let's wait and see. The whole division knows that I carried you in my arms all the way back that night."

Wang Yao suddenly ceased struggling or making a sound. He didn't know if he could never ever speak to Ivan again, but he knew that Ivan would dare to carry him to the base. He turned his face to the side in despair and shut his eyes, but Ivan's jovial laughters still came into his ears.

"Oh you…" Ivan was finally willing to put him down, letting him lean on the white poplar tree and placing two hands on his shoulders, still laughing breathlessly. Suddenly without a sign, Ivan placed his lips on his and kissed with desperate ardour for a long time, like that night in the snowy woods.

Wang Yao didn't know how long this kiss lasted; in fact, he didn't remember much after Ivan started kissing him. All he remembered was that Ivan finally released him, looked at him, then suddenly bursted into laughter again, until running out of the woods, still laughing.

Wang Yao stood under that white poplar. He picked up the drawing board Ivan left on the ground and found his own face on there, staring at him with a faint smile.

"Why are you laughing? What are you laughing about!" He sat down, holding that piece of sketch in front of him and fuming in secrecy.


	26. Natasha's Letter

Ch 26 Natasha's Letter

In a difficult time, tenderness was often accompanied with commiseration. In a time such as this, the more one loved his lover, the more that person seemed to be a victim to him that one day would be sacrificed to something great and sublime.

During the rest of the day, Wang Yao didn't talk to Ivan. Until night fell when soldiers came around the campfire did he finally sat down beside Ivan. It was the place furthermost to the fire, outside the crowd.

Under the dim light, Ivan could still read Wang Yao's features: pale and solemn forehead, a subtle wrinkle between the eyebrows, and sparkling eyes reflected with the golden firelight—all stayed in his eyes and heart in the snowy woods of Rogachevo—Bereza.

The wound-like strand of black hair on the forehead hurt Ivan's eyes. He tried to brush it away, but his reaching hand was grasped by Wang Yao and locked inbetween them. So he extended the other hand underneath the military coat, wrapped around Wang Yao and carefully place it on his left waist. Somehow, he felt that the huge bruise would never disappear, like the wound-like strand of hair foreverly stayed on Wang Yao's forehead.

They fixed their gazes upon the campfire and sang along with other soldiers under the accompaniement of accordion. No one mentioned the thing during the day. As if the unfettered pair in the woods were some other people.

And this was how they welcomed the year of 1942—the first new year in the battlefield.

Someone reminded Natasha that she promised several days ago to dance in front of everyone. The girl blushed—she did say so! But as soon as she thought about dancing, the head nurse's breathless sound of laughing haunted her from all directions. "Dear Juliet, who's the Romeo of your heart?"

She got up, walked in front of the fire, and said with a voice that was dignified (to the best of her ability) but without losing sincerity:

"I did promised…But as I thought afterwards, dancing in these clothes doesn't look nice…" said she regretfully, glancing over the army coat on herself. "This is the only clothes I can wear in the front…"

The excuse was also the truth. Last year in the school new year celebration, Natasha dressed up like the snow maiden Snegurochka* from Russian folktales. But after the war broke out, she—and all the girls like her who volunteered to the front—hid all the youth's radiance into coarse army uniforms. Whenever their went through towns and saw those women dressing in fur coat, dress, stockings and high heels—like the way she dressed before the war—Natasha would just turn away her face.

Then, a light but firm voice from the crowd entered her ears:

"Actually the way you're dressing now is more beautiful than those girls haven't been to the front…

"Listen to our good old Toris!" the soldiers gloated in amusement. Among the clutter of joking and gaging, the eldest soldier said to her in a fatherly manner:

"Young lady, the front is never meant to be a place for you girls. You should have stayed at the back, putting on clean dresses and let us men protecting you. But now you're here sufferring with us because the war has befallen into such a treacherous state. I sympathize with your fate, but as Toris said, you have nothing to be ashamed of…"

"Then allow me sing a song." Natasha replied with gratitude.

When the song Katyusha began, Ivan could feel the body next to him slightly trembled.

"What's wrong?" asked him. But Wang Yao only lowered his eyelashes, hiding away the painful expressions that clouded over his eyes. To imagine that Wang Yao could be keeping something unpleasant from him, Ivan lightly squeezed Wang Yao's wrists.

Soldiers sang along, "Oh, this song, sweet song of a young girl, flying to the bright sun. To the soldiers on the far frontier, bringing greeting from Katyusha…"

The song was suddenly interrupted with soldiers' laughing—a bunch of people jokingly thrusted and blamed the embarrassed Toris:

"Our Toris sang the wrong lyric! The girl in the song is Katyusha, not Natasha!"

"Oh, come on. You thought he could ever get it right? When he sang this song by himself, it was always Natasha…"

"You guys are fussy." Natasha opened her mouth, finally able to claim her haughty fashion that she always took pride in, "Other people can sing however they want. It's none of your business..."

The appearance of the postman ended the chaotic scene. Soon, letters mixed with faint fragrance of homeland soil reached into soldiers' hands, telling the longings of families faraway. They were the most precious new year's gift.

"Kaletin!" The postman waved an unclaimed letter in his hand, "Who's Kaletin?"

Immediately, the entire base fell into muteness. Among the dead silence, a voice pounded everyone's heart, "Soviet Guards lieutenant, reconnaissance platoon commander Kaletin was killed in a scouting mission in Rogachevo—Bereza region."

Around the fire, young men quietly chatted:

"I guess Kaletin's family hadn't received the death notification when they wrote this letter…"

"His family lived in Leningrad. You know how terribly surrounded it is right now, damn hard to send out a letter…"

"He was only twenty-two years old…"

The eldest soldier who spoke to Natasha took the letter from the postman, read the sender's name, then handed over to the pale-faced Natasha:

"Read for us, young lady! You see, the person writing to lieutenant Kaletin is also called Natasha."

Natasha's trembling fingers could barely hold the thin letter paper. She took a deep breath, and began reading under the firelight:

"My dearest! I'm writing from the besieged city. Life is very difficult. Everyday, there are people dying from shortage of food and fuel. But you must know, your fiancée Natasha is striving to live, and she is faithful to you like she did before…" Natasha took a deep breath and grasped her collar, trying to sustain her composure, "…May hope and my love protect you from perils! Let this love and hope fly to your side, by your tired face and tell you: this is me, your Natasha! If you were wounded and someone looked after you and encouraged you, it was also me—your Natasha! If death befell you and there was within you the last bit of strength, it was also me—I must save you so you can come back to my side…"

Natasha couldn't read on. The tears she held back from the crowd finally crossed down her face, falling onto the letter written by the girl bearing the same name.

"Lieutenant Kaletin was seriously wounded during the mission." said Ivan abruptly with a deep voice. "He could had survived. We left him to an old ranger to look after, but a traitor—also a childhood friend of mine—led the enemies searching the ranger's cabin and ruthlessly shot them both."

"This letter should be sent to the museum, to tell people in the future what war is." said another soldier.

More people were just silent. The war had been going on for half a year and soldiers had witnessed too much loss. But at this moment, the letter of a deceased comrade's fiancée pressed unprecedented grief on everyone's heart.

Somewhere from the stagnant air echoed Natasha's singing.

Before the war, she planned to sing this old Russian folk song on her music school entrance exam—"North Star". But now, under such grieving atmosphere, why did she sing it? She didn't even know herself.

"A tall building stood, many rooms inside. But there was one room, that was all the brighter…"

Then, she heard the sound of accordion—someone was playing accompaniment for her. The golden firelight outlined the person's contour in the dark night—it was Toris Lorinaitis. She never saw him playing accordion before. Although it was slightly out of tune, at least he knew how to play her favorite song!

"In there the bride lived, all the more lovelier than anyone. Like the North Star, more brilliant than all the stars…"

Everyone sat there listening quietly. At the entire base, only two people were standing—she and he…The splendid Milky Way expanded above them, just like this young astronomer once said—"Stars are the roads of us, the roads of scouts". On the night sky right above their heads there was a particularly bright star, glowing with frosty cold light; like a proud girl, overlooking this war-ridden land with naivety and desolation.

"In sorrow, she lamented the man faraway, her tears dropped on her wedding ring…"

Why did tears sneak down her face once again? Natasha had always hated crying. Perhaps it was for her delayed music dream due to the war; perhaps for her youth destined to be trapped inside the army coat; perhaps for the girl also named Natasha whom she never met; perhaps for lieutenant Kaletin who could never return to his fiancée; and, perhaps for all the soldiers here that might lose their lives on the next day…

"The groom left home to a strange land, and would not come back soon…"

Perhaps, for this young man accompanying her as well. She felt that the glow casted on him from that bright star was so bleak, and he, standing silently under the chilling light was like a forgotten lighthouse.

"When the spring come, he will be back. Joy will rise with the sun!"

When Natasha finally finished singing, she said in low voice, "Excuse me!" and quickly ran towards the bunker, not letting anyone see her.

* * *

><p>"North Star" (Северная звезда) by Glinka, also known as the wedding song<p>

.com/watch?v=efn-tD8NiyA


	27. It Is Joy To Live

Ch 27 It Is Joy To Live

"She is in love, except that she doesn't know." Ivan's pondering eyes followed his sister away.

"Perhaps she knows, just doesn't want to admit…"

His hand placing beneath Wang Yang's palm tightened:

"Why?"

The locking hand on Ivan's wrist slowly unfolded.

"In the time of war, perhaps love brings people much more pain than the happiness it can give."

"War comes on its own and so does love." His eyes passed the crowd and remained at the blazing campfire, "When they want to come, nobody can stop them."

"When the war broke out, we instantly know to resist it to the end." Wang Yao suddenly withdrew his hand, stood up and walked away. "…...but love?"

The sudden emptiness next to him forced him to follow Wang Yao till they reached the end of their base. When the black silhouette of poplar woods emerged before his eyes, Wang Yao suddenly turned around. He couldn't stop his step and almost bump into him. Through the starlight—in stead of the campfire left far behind—Ivan was able to read Wang Yao's face for the first time tonight.

This was not the helpless man who he poked fun of in the poplar woods during the day; or the man who meekly allowed him expressing his affection in the Rogachevo—Bereza's snow field; nor the "good friend" Wang Yao whom he appreciated and admired before they poured their hearts out to each other. An extraordinary quality almost made this face into a different person. One year later when Ivan discovered that he had survived the battle of Stalingrad with all his limbs still intact, he finally realized that only people who was pulled out of the death's gate and just recently join back to life could possess such a face.

But for the moment, all he could do was placing both hands on Wang Yao's shoulders, "Don't be like this!"

"I thought you would go talk to Natasha." said Wang Yao, obviously not addressing the question. "As a man, I know perfectly well how to control myself. But girls are different."

A sense of loneliness looming into Ivan's heart, he found out that Wang Yao's mind wasn't on him at all.

"Let Natashenka grow on her own. If it's like before, as a brother, I'll allow her be spoiled. But this is wartime…She herself is in the army, too. There'll be more cruel things waiting ahead of her."

The line between Wang Yao's eyebrows was almost like a groove cleaved by saber, and, along with his solemn voice, quickly widened and elongated, almost like the grooves on the snow trodden by tank tracks.

"Vanya…Before Natasha came here, we had another nurse. I remember very clearly—the day was October 19. None of the men in our company was shot, but instead she, a little girl, died…When we were digging her grave on the muddy ground, this thought had haunted me." The pair of eyes like the dark night suddenly looked at Ivan in the eyes, as though to engulf him entirely. "In the future when I'm old, if someone come and ask me, 'how come a man like you survived but those girls whom you're supposed to protect were killed or let their youth wasted on the occupied land?' By then, how do I answer…"

These words made Ivan wanted to pull Wang Yao in his arms. But he didn't dare to, despite their intimacy earlier. He was thinking too about those girls who should had been happy: his sister with all sorts of emotions welling up in her heart, the fiancée waiting anxiously inside the besieged city, the former nurse of the infantry unit dying in the autumn field…If he could see through Wang Yao's whole mind, then he would hear another girl's crying: "But where are you people? Why haven't you come yet? I'm not strong and I can't bear the sufferring, but what's there for me to believe that you will strike back?"

He was speechless. In that short period of time unknown to him, Wang Yao quickly grew up. He felt that all he could offer to him was a pair of listening ears.

"Looking at your sister, I often thought about our Chunyan…When she couldn't even read many characters, she could already recognize the sound of Japanese bombers and know when to lie down." An expression of tenderness and torment instantly surfaced onto Wang Yao's face, "By the spring, she will be twelve. I often dream that perhaps when I return home, peace would come to my war-ridden homeland; if not, then I would rather carry this gun for a few more years. As long as my sister grow into a big girl without seeing another war, a brother is willing to do anything…"

"…perhaps when I return home…"

Until this moment did Ivan suddenly realize one thing that, in the past several months, had been overlooked—deliberately or otherwise—by his unnamed apprehension…

Wang Yao came here—and to his side—from a foreign country faraway. One day, Wang Yao would return to his country.

"…Yes, you will return to your own country." He finally pieced his words into a sentence. "And nobody can stop you!"

Ivan always thought himself as a man of happiness, because whatever he wished to do could all be done. But right now, he came to realization with childly envy and anguish that the thing he used to take pride in would be used to describe someone else.

He felt that Wang Yao gently burried his face onto his shoulder.

"Please forgive me."

He brushed Wang Yao's chin, lifting the pale face, and said in the most natural voice he could:

"Why would you say that? When my country is at her hardest time, you stand by her…Every Russian people shall thank you…" He could no longer suppress the fervent emotions that his voice was almost out of tone. "Do you know what I think? If I wasn't able to save you then, by your words, then shall I let people question me in the future? 'You're the son of Mother Russia. How come you let this young Chinese man sacrifice his life for her and you survived instead?'"

Wang Yao's face trembled in his hand, but he smiled with agitation and continued:

"Come to think of it, I shall thank your country too…She sent the best of all her sons to my side. In the future, when she needs you more than I, do you think that I would be so ungrateful to hog you and not return you to her…"

Wang Yao broke loose of his hand and covered his eyes with his own hands.

"Vanya…Vanechka! Allow me to say something that has nothing to do with country. Just one." Wang Yao suddenly took off his hands, out of the night-like eyes shone the radiance like day light. "You have read War and Peace, haven't you? Do you remember the words Pierre said to Rostova? 'If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love!'"

"This is what I should say." Ivan shook his head, "I am the unfortunate Pierre, and you are Rostova."

"Don't say it like I'm a girl. I am a scout of the Soviet Guards!"

These words were spoken with an entirely playful voice like those unfettered conversations in the woods during the day. Ivan felt some sense of relief, although he clearly understood that the present atmosphere was different.

"I never think of you as a girl. Never!" Ivan said in all seriousness. "Where could I find a girl in the whole world that's as good as you!"

As they walked towards the crowd by the campfire, Wang Yao heard Ivan singing at the back.

This song was not "Don't Touch Us", or "Far Across the River", nor "Chapaev the Hero"—those songs echoed during the years of 1918—1921. This was an old Russian folk song that, back then, the cavalry rider Ivan Braginsky was singing when he galloped towards Wang Yao in that golden evening.

"Cossacks rode on horses, to a dreadful river of Terek.

There were together, 40 thousand of us.

And the bank was covered, and the field was covered

With hundreds of cut bleeding bodies in the grass."

"Our leader knows everyone in rows.

The squadron got on horses but forgot about me.

They acquired freedom and the Cossack's kindom,

But the dusty burning earth remained now for me."

The entire base started to sing along except Wang Yao who didn't know this song, listened with complicated feelings. The Cossack song of soldier's destiny! When it first came into his ears, he said, "A walking man could not have sung in such exuberance and melancholy. Only a rider could have a voice as expansive as the field itself."

And now, Ivan lost his horse and joined the infantry. The soldiers' gallant and grievous singing was like a fast horse, carrying the entire base and galloping into the sky.

"…Ah, the first straying bullet, the first straying bullet,

Ah, the first straying bullet, wounded knee of tired horse.

Ah, the second straying bullet, the second straying bullet,

Ah, the second straying bullet, hit my heart to my remorse…"

Compared to listening to Natasha's letter, a deeper and broader sorrow heavily pressed on Wang Yao's heart. This song was Ivan and his comrades' new year gift to him. He had no way to refuse and nowhere to hide. Any trench in the world could not hide him away from this sorrow.

"…It is joy, my brothers, it is joy to live!

With our lucky leader, we will never have to grieve.

It is joy, my brothers, it is joy to live!

With our lucky leader, we will never have to grieve."

* * *

><p>"Enjoy, Brothers, Enjoy" (Любо, братцы, любо)<p>

.com/watch?v=bhy2ZYoyPkU


	28. Decision

Ch 28 Decision

Wang Yao felt that this sorrow was not coming from the battlefield, but instead was brought by the singing from the distant time of childhood. Alas, the soldiers' singing! Like a fast horse catching up with the stream of time…

"Mama, how come papa rarely comes home? Doesn't he love you?"

"He loves me, but I only occupy a very small place in his heart. He gives the greater love to those less fortunate."

"Mama, why do you still love papa?"

"Because mama knows that this place is very small, but it's irreplaceable…"

From a very early age, Wang Yao knew that the world contained too much misfortune and sorrow. But one day, it would all end because there was father—and he had long been exercising himself to be just like him.

But he also knew that father was worthy of all people except his mother. But mother never resented, because she loved father…

As he sat down by the fire again, a voice more intense than fire was burning inside—

"War comes on its own. So does love. When they want to come, nobody can stop them."

If it couldn't be stopped, than embrace it!

The moment he saw Ivan again since his return would be engraved in his heart forever—the handsome young man like the forest god sitting in front of the tall white poplar tree, fully immersed in his art-making. It was as if he was not in a war's battlefront, but at a school's fieldtrip in some quiet peaceful holiday when he as a student used to love. He realized that in soldier Ivan Braginsky before his eyes, there was something earthy and beautiful, like peace itself. How precious! Especially to someone like Wang Yao who lived through torture and death's threat and just recently returned to their own people from sick bed…

He lingered behind the tree, watching everything. It wasn't out of shyness and trepidation from the reunion, but because he feared that as soon as he presented himself, the illusion of peace would fade away. But as he was caught off guard and fell into Ivan's arms, listening to the child-like unscrupulous humours and watching the dazzling blue sky above the treetops, he almost felt that peace had really descended…

The dazzling, serene and beautiful blue sky…if only it could stay upon this woods forever…

…Inside, he was crystal clear: they were lucky enough to encounter a moment of peaceful time at the frontline. When Wang Yao walked out of the woods, he carefully stepped around those tree trunks bombed on the ground and soldiers' new grave below the trees. As part of reclaiming the area, there were deadly battles fought in the poplar woods not long ago, but now, it was calm as the long-absent time before war.

Meanwhile he also understood that they were temporarily resting here. As soon as new orders were commanded, they would go back to the rumbling rhythmic grinder of war that crushed human lives.

He had already thought about these things. Over the past few days and weeks, not only did he know who he loved, but also who he was himself.

He was a soldier.

Except in the poplar woods during the day, as well as the night in the snowy woods—when he was in Ivan's arms. In those times, life's sorrow and pain were thousands of miles away from him; he had no identity or obligations; and he was not shy or afraid of love. In those times, no one—including himself—could blame him. In those times, he was completely free.

"If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love!"

In the winter of 1812 when an unsuccessful love affair overwhelmed Natasha Rostova with agony, this was what Pierre Bezukhov said to her. It was on the last page of the two-volumned War and Peace. Wang Yao remembered it very well, because he was only able to finish the first volumn before he had to return them to the library and joined the army.

He didn't know that Rostova was with Pierre in the end.

The next morning, Wang Yao went to the division commander's bunker. He must respond to a question five days earlier. When he was still in the medical tent, the commander who awarded him had a talk with him. According to the commander, Wang Yao was the offspring of foreign revolutionist who came to study in the Soviet and he had the absolute right—and even obligation—to stay at the back.

"Please don't take it as a humiliation to your soldier's honor, young man." said the commander. "You should stay at the back and continue your study. You can apply to whichever school you want so you can go back and build your country in the future."

He answered: his father died on the battlefield of Japanese fascists. And now, as he was in the Soviet Union, it was perfectly natural and sensible to fight the German fascists. Besides, he was gaining military experiences so he could go back and contribute to the liberation of his country later. But the commander tap his index finger on the table disagreeably, "Revolution will eventually succeed. War will eventually end. Your country still needs to be built. By then, what do you plan to do?"

"There's plenty of time to study afterwards." said him stubbornly. "Before the war ends, I'll never betray a soldier's obligation."

"Then we can send you to military school. The Communist International offers conveniences to the revolutionist's offsprings like you. Very soon, you'll reach the rank of lieutenant. Then, if you want, you can still come back to the Red Army to keep fighting and gain field experience. All branches of armed force for you to choose—aviation, tank, artillery, etc." Before he left, the commander said, "I suggest you not to stay in infantry. As you know, infantry gets the worst end of the stick in the front. People die like cracking sunflower seeds*…I give you five more days to consider."

Over the last five days, Wang Yao had been thinking over this matter. Was it that studying at the back had absolutely no attraction to him at all? The government explained very clearly when sending him off to the Soviet—they sent him to study. Otherwise, they would had already let him go to the Northeast to join his father's army. Even when he won first place of biology in school's subject contests, he wrote in his essay that he dreamed to be a soldier like his father. The teacher asked him why and he replied, "Because my country needs it."

"That's duty, not dream! Wang, is there something that you really want to do?"

Then, he started to realize that what he really wanted to be was a biologist…But now, he still believed that during a war, a person shouldn't choose otherwise. Countless number of people came to the front straight from classrooms…Then how about military school? Combining personal development and service to his country—it was undoubtedly the most advantageous…

—After three to six months when he graduated from military school, it would be almost impossible to return to his original unit.

"Let me think about it for myself…"

When Wang Yao walked out of the commander's bunker, he saw in the distance, a person standing rigidly like a pine tree—Ivan Braginsky. The former rider—presently infantry scout put his two hands inside the coat pockets, but for some reason, Wang Yao felt that they must had clenched into two tight fists.

Ivan must knew why he went to the commander's bunker—how could anything be unknown to Ivan if he wished to know!

"Vanya!"

He ran to the young man and reached his two hands inside Ivan's coat pockets. It was as he expected. He tenderly unfolded the tightened fists, crossed their fingers together and gingerly pulled them out from the pockets.

"Vanya…I won't go anywhere before the war ends! I will stay right here in the infantry with everyone…with you!" Tipping his toes, he tried to look at Ivan's eyes at the same level—the eyes full of sadness! "So, be happy! Smile for me! Don't you always love smiling?"

His tone was as if he was comforting a child—like he handled his teary-eyed little sister Chunyan. Ivan pulled out his hands forcibly and hurriedly stroked that lock of black hair.

"Before I know you, I always loved smiling! But ever since I know this naughty little white horse, I have to fight with you, and later go look for you hating myself, and risk my life to steal you back from death's door, and anxiously wait for you to come back to the base…and then, I have to fear that you will leave one day…" Ivan stomped the ground. "How could it be easy to smile!"

"Vanya, don't be like this. The Milky Way above is the footprints of scouts. Do you think I will leave this road and step away to somewhere else…do you remember? I told you that night…" He couldn't finish. Thinking of that night made his face blush irresistibly.

"Yao, you can do whatever you want…You and I are the same kind of people, always true to oneself…"

"Ivan Braginsky, you listen carefully. In this whole world there are four most precious things that I will remain loyal to forever." Wang Yao stared into his eyes and pronounced word by word, "My country, a soldier's honour, a biologist's dream, and you. You only occupy a small place in my heart, but it is irreplaceable…"


	29. Tonya

Ch 29 Tonya

"Broadcasting from Moscow…the battle report of January 7, 1942…"

After the first ring of doorbell, Lyuba Orlova flew over to the door like a cheerful bird. With one letter in each of those two small hands, she flew back to her mother's side who was still listening to the battle report.

"Mama!" Lyuba yelled, "It's papa's letter from the front again!"

Both letters were folded into triangles—sign of letters from the battlefield indeed. But mama looked at the envelopes, smiled and shook her head, "Sweetheart, it's not papa. These letters are from aunt Natasha and uncle Vanya."

Lyuba loved aunt Natasha because auntie was so pretty and sang beautifully. Lyuba also loved uncle Vanya because uncle's drawings were incredible. Lyuba kept her portrait that uncle sketched for her right above the headboard of her bed. In her words—"it looks more Lyuba than real Lyuba!" And of course, it was also because uncle was handsome…

"But nobody is more handsome than papa." Lyuba would quickly comment with a serious face whenever her mind came across it. Nobody in the world could compare to her papa—air force captain Andrei Orlov. Seven years ago—according to the old folks—when papa was still an aviation school student, he spent the summer in Bereza. All the girls in the village lingered outside his window but, in the end, papa brought mama to Moscow. Aunt Natasha who then was twelve years old kept a long face when they left, since that handsome man didn't take notice of her at all; uncle Vanya, however, was happy because this man took the burden of unwanted attention for him.

"Mama, what's in the letter?" asked Lyuba curiously as her mama opened one letter. But Tonya didn't read it to Lyuba like usual. Her eyes first flashed through a hint of surprise, and then, smile, "Sweetheart, you are too young to understand it. It's about love."

Lyuba pouted—she was almost five years old! Half a year ago before papa went to the front, he told her, "Lyuba, you're a big girl now. You must look after mama and your future baby brother or sister." It had been half a year and Lyuba would very soon become a big sister, but mama still treated her like a baby!

"But papa said I'm a big girl!" Lyuba protested. "General Elizaveta in the nursery across the street promoted me to general last week. I know love stuff, too. I talk about it with other kids all the time…"

"Go play with your general Elizaveta, dear general Lyuba. Mama needs to write some letters…

As her daughter's footsteps disappeared out of the door, Tonya Orlova repositioned her posture as to sit comfortably for herself and the baby inside, then carefully examined the opened letter in her hand. If it wasn't the name "Natalia Braginskaya" written as the sender, she wouldn't believe that the letter was the work of her serious little sister.

The letter was quite a mess—the writings were scribbled, words scratched out here and there, conveyed with incoherence. The only sentence without grammar mistake was the very last one—"I am doomed. Dear sister, save me. Tell me what I should do…"

Such a letter was very clear to the big sister. "I can't believe Natasha could be falling in love." Tonya pondered, "And from this letter, it seemed that she didn't want to admit it…What is Vanya thinking? They're in the same troop, why didn't he straighten her mind out…"

And now she remembered that Vanya's letter was still unopened, though she thought that she already knew what was in there. Her brother's letters all sounded the same—"Alive and healthy. Take care. Vanya." Apparently, he was trying to pull off an army man's calm and imposing manner.

"He's just a silly boy. Can't rely on him to talk to Natasha." thought Tonya as she opened her brother's letter, taking a big sister's high ground, "He didn't even have a serious relationship before. He might have passed some love notes or wandered in the park with girls, but how could those count…"

The envelope opened and shocked Tonya as a pile of paper scraps fell on the table. "What was he thinking?" At first, Tonya blamed her brother's antic, but soon, judging from the writings on them, she decided that this letter was far more informative than his previous briefings.

So she decided to play jigsaw puzzle. Fifteen minutes later, she stared at the scraps pieced together and a vague sadness rose up inside her heart.

In the beginning, her brother quoted a few sentences from War and Peace—the citations were baffling. Then, he suddenly started the accusation of war, aflamed with indignation—the word choices were solemn enough to be published on a newspaper. And now, he confessed his own jealousy. In Tonya's memory, her self-important brother was never so eagerly jealous of anyone.

"Dear sister," he wrote, "I know that you won't feel comfortable when you read this, considering that Andrei is also in the front. But I still have to tell you: I'm jealous of you. When you met your lover, the war hasn't started yet. I'm jealous of little Lyuba, because when she meets her lover, there won't be any war. I'm jealous of all the young people living fifty, sixty or seventy years later. I wish I could live till then and tell them straight into their eyes, 'Don't forget me, you happy people!'"

He then hastily crossed out a paragraph. The writings afterward were almost illegible—"Sometimes I think: I'm not only guarding Moscow, but also guarding my sister and niece who live in Moscow, and all those people that haven't been born yet. Alas! I'm guarding the people that I'm jealous of. I can't help but to feel sorry for myself—why wouldn't I be sorry? As I just grew up, the war was heading towards me as if I was born for it. Bah! The war treated me kindly and gave me a lover. I don't dare to conclude that there isn't a better lover in the whole world; but no matter how good those people might be, I wouldn't trade this one in. Sister, would you trade in your Andrei for someone else, even if that other person might be ten times better?"

"How could I! Vanya!" Tonya uttered. At this moment, she felt as if her brother was sitting in this room and staring at her with jealousy and pain—she could understand such sentiment, but couldn't relate such a face to that proud and cheerful Vanya at all.

She sighed deeply and continued with the torn letter:

"…But don't think that I'm afraid of death. My lover is a brave person, and so am I—not anything less than your brave eagle Andrei. I'm just too willing to live life…Yes, the war won't last forever and one day I will return to my daily life. But now, I'm in fact afraid of the peaceful life that I've been yearning for. Tonya, do you understand? When I'm in a battle, I know my lover is by my side. I can even steal my lover back from death's hand. Not even death could separate us, but peace can…"

At the end, her brother wrote in big bold writings:

"Don't worry about me! You know what I am all these years!"

"I know…" Tonya murmured, "I know that you're a brave man. I know that you would tear the letter into pieces after you finished. And I know that you would still send the torned letter to your sister…"

At this moment, she felt that a small foot inside her just kicked. She caressed this small, warm and restless life with a woman's whole tenderness.

"You heard all that, didn't you? It's letter from uncle Vanya. He said that he's protecting you. He said that he's jealous of you, too…"


	30. Lovers' Faces

Ch 30 Lovers' Faces

At the beginning of January, 1942, when Tonya and Lyuba in Moscow were listening to the battle report on radio, the Soviet army had just completed the counterstrike in the strategic direction of western suburb. The German army retreated 100 to 250 kilometers outside of Moscow. The myth of the invincible Nazi Germany was broken at the city of Moscow.

"Moscow is untouchable!" so as everyone said. "Napoleon couldn't do it. Hitler won't either!"

On January 8, the armies of western front, Kalinin front and Bryansk front began the offensive campaign of recovering Vyazma. As soldiers devoted their hearts to the endless sounds of gunfires, artilleries, footsteps and outcry of "ura", they each reserved a tiny place for their personal sentiments at the bottom of hearts. Small, but irreplaceable.

Even as the silly boy in his big sister's eyes, Ivan easily noticed his younger sister's recent change. On that face, the contour softened and the two elegant eyebrows were getting longer like a flying crane's spreaded wings. She still reserved her smiles, but the eyes were full of naïve tenderness. This tenderness wasn't directed at someone, but went beyond everything, looking into the distant sky. For this reason, she was like the winter sky too—lucid, bright, but melancholic.

Ivan had seen such a face. Seven years ago, the handsome pilot Andrei Orlov lingered outside a window of the Braginsky's. But now that this same expression appeared on Toris and Natasha's faces, he came to realize that the looks on lovers' faces did not belong to themselves, but were gifts accepted by each other. He saw his big sister's expression on Andrei's face and on big sister's face he found Andrei's.

Toris and Natasha were certainly faithful to their duties during battles. But ever since the new year whenever the rumbling firings ceased for a moment, the lucid, bright and melancholic expression would coincidentally appear on their faces. They weren't looking at their comrades nor each other—in fact, they almost didn't speak a word over the past few days. But it didn't matter.

These days, Ivan couldn't catch a moment to spend with Wang Yao alone. Only at the end of a full day's mission when exhausted soldiers snuggled together and fell asleep, he would finally get the chance to lean beside Wang Yao. When he couldn't sleep, he would peek at the person beside him—and then he wouldn't be able to sleep at all.

In fact, he had always been a deep sleeper; but now, he would be haunted by dreams even if he could sleep. The worst thing was that all those dreams felt completely real: he dreamed that Wang Yao was shot on the ground; Wang Yao was blown into the air by explosion; Wang Yao got on the train heading to military school; Wang Yao went back to China and sent him a wedding photo of him and another Chinese girl…...

Over and over, he woke up in cold sweat. Turning aside, he would see Wang Yao's face snuggling up to him in sleep, reflected with the flames burning at the distant horizon, was so beautiful. Unreal. He anxiously reached out his hand to touch Wang Yao's hands that were gripping on the rifle even in sleep, and felt the metal's coldness and the fingers' warmth. And so, he felt relieved for the moment.

With extremely gentle gesture, he gingerly verified the other person's existence. He would brush away that lock of dark hair on the pale forehead, or flatten the faint line between the two brows, or affectionately place his hand on Wang Yao's waist—that large bruise he saw that night never went away from his mind.

The more he expressed his affection, the more his heart felt uneasy. At the end, he almost wanted to grab Wang Yao's collar, shook him awake and shouted a few words at those dark eyes—like the letter he wrote to his big sister, to those young people living in the future, "Don't forget me, you happy people!"

He couldn't bear himself but only bury his nearly twitching face from resentment into Wang Yao's dark long hair, hiding away the pain and jealousy that his sister could never had imagined. And so, he waited for dawn, waited for the order of offence. By then, he would be able to express his joy and bravery that he had always taken pride in.

The fire burned all night at the horizon. With the light of explosion faraway, it looked cruel and beautiful.

One day, Ivan finally caught a chance to be alone. Wang Yao threw him a glance before he opened his mouth, so they stepped on the bumpy trail covered with grooves and burned metal scraps, heading towards the woods at the end of their base. It was not the poplar woods that witnessed their affection, but the Russian land was never short of woods like that.

"If you feel terrible, just say so…"Wang Yao looked at him with displeasure, "What were all those at night…"

But Ivan wasn't going to regret, "I thought you were sleeping."

"How could I be sleeping with you touching me like that?" Wang Yao flushed, "What if other people saw that?"

"If they saw, then you kind of deserve it. You didn't push me away when you were awake."

Before he finished the sentence, he saw that shy and riled expression on Wang Yao's face as expected. He knew that he already felt awful enough, and having a serious discussion would only make matters worse. Quick, say something funny before they start a quarrel! Although he discovered in frustration that the joke wasn't smart at all.

But the anticipated quarreling didn't begin. He heard Wang Yao sighed, then held his hand:

"I was waiting for you to wake me up…maybe it'll make you feel better."

He was speechless, then suddenly pulled the other person into his arms.

"Forgive me…I didn't wake you because I just wanted you to get more sleep…"

"You see, we are not that bad." A voice vaguely came out of the person in his arms, "It can even be said that we are good people. But even good people happen to upset each other too."

"Let's talk about something else." After a little while, Wang Yao broke loose of that hug, unbottoned his jacket and took out a piece of neatly folded paper from his shirt pocket. "You are so mindless! You forgot your sketch in the woods the other day but you never even metioned it these days. If it wasn't me bringing it back…"

"Because I knew that you would bring it back." Ivan spreaded the paper gratefully and right there, he saw Wang Yao's face looking at him with a faint smile.

"Vanya…do you remember long time ago you said that drawing other people was easy, but somehow, it was impossible to draw my face…Why are you able to draw me now?"

"Because the portrait of your loved one is different from everyone else…" he turned around, left hand plucking the bark uneasily. "At first, you were at the base not far away from me. I was quite relaxed so I couldn't draw. But then you were ended up in the medical tent. I counted down your return date everyday until finally I couldn't bear it anymore. So I had to create you!"

He abruptly turned around and pressed two hands on Wang Yao's shoulder, said with a gloomy face, "You don't know how gruelling it was to draw the person you love!"


	31. The Story of Chinese Dragon

Ch 31 The Story of Chinese Dragon

Wang Yao reached out both hands and clenched on Ivan's wrists hanging over his shoulders. His fingertips felt the strong beating pulse, suddenly taking him back to the distant childhood when his mother first taught him how to measure pulse. He could never forget that touching moment of amazement and delight. If it was grandmother's graveyard that made him realize the earth's fascinating spell of giving and taking of lives, then, the seemingly endless surge of blood made him realize that he was a part of this everlasting land, and, along with the land, would never age or die.

He was reluctant to take his hands off from Ivan's wrists!

"Vanya! You are life itself!" he annouced with a loud and clear voice, like a boy.

"Only people studying biology would say something like this." Ivan recovered his calm and humorous composure, "I'm just a painter. My job is to put life on paper and give them a second life with my own interpretation."

Now, Wang Yao remembered that his portrait sketch had been in Ivan's gripping hands all this time. He quickly grabbed the paper—luckily, only the corner was wrinkled and soaked with sweat in Ivan's palm.

"Look what you did! Should be more careful!"

"When the war's over, I'll make you a better one. This one is nothing…"

The portrait was drawn on a piece of paper torn off from a student notebook that Ivan probably brought from home when their unit reclaimed the village of Bereza. One couldn't wish for high quality drawing paper and paints on the battlefield, but Wang Yao indeed loved this simple pencil sketch. Especially that pair of eyes, exhibiting a faint expression on the verge of smile—those were his own eyes, familiar but refreshingly novel. When he looked into the mirror before the war, he never discovered such expression.

But he knew that he wouldn't be looked anything different. Because these days he could see such expression on Toris' and Natasha's faces, as well as Vanya's—lucid, bright and melancholic, like the winter sky…

He couldn't remember how he tiptoed, surrounded his arms around Vanya's neck, and placed his lips onto his lover's with a solid kiss. All he could remember was his burning face when those strong and warm arms surrounded his waist.

"How could you say the drawing was not good!" He finally broke free from him, barely able to keep down his shyness from their intimacy owing to his own forward gesture, and pointing aimlessly with his finger. "Look at the eyes, they are just wonderful…"

"You're pointing the neck." Ivan smiled and winked; but to Wang Yao, that smile was like watching a monkey show. To prove himself not being a monkey, Wang Yao cleared his throat like all the important people do before they spoke, and said with all seriousness, "Look at these eyes. They are truly like putting eyes on a dragon's painting."

The Russian expression for "finishing touch" escaped his mind, so he said this idiom of his native language. As expected, Ivan raised an eyebrow in confusion, so he quickly added, "You draw a dragon, then put eyes on it, and it will suddenly come to life!"

"Then tell me what this 'dragon' is?"

Wang Yao cheered up in an instant. In front of this Ivan who always treated him like a little guy, he could finally claim a sense of "superiority". "In my country, dragon, or 'Loong', is a magical being in legends. People respect it and honour it. My mother almost named me 'Loong'…" Then he gave him a lecture of all kinds of things related to Chinese dragon until Ivan begged him, "Please, tell me that story of drawing eyes on dragon!"

"About one thousand and four hundred years ago—which is even earlier than Grand Duchy of Moscow!" He raised his chin complacently, "There was a great painter in China. Things he drew looked so vivid, almost like real—maybe you'll be like him! One day, he painted four dragons on the wall but only put eyes on one of them. A moment later, thunder and lightening came out of nowhere and that dragon with eyes flew away…"

"…Why?"

"Because dragon is a spiritual and divine creature…you drew eyes on it and it would fly away. The ones without eyes stayed on the wall."

"Yao…did that dragon fly back?"

"Dragon is the freest of all. Who could bound a dragon? It flew away and never came back…"

Suddenly, a moment of dull pain struck his heart but he couldn't see his own face turning ghastly pale. For a second, he thought that his two feet took off the ground—Ivan grabbed his shoulder and knees, swinging him into those big arms like they did in the woods before new year. How happy they were back then…

He didn't struggle nor make a sound, but only buried his face deeply onto Ivan's shoulder, not letting Ivan see his eyes, like when they were in the Bereza woods when Ivan kissed him for the first time.

"Well, we're back on this topic again." He heard Ivan's low voice, "This little dragon will eventually fly away, right? But what if I just hold you like this, not letting you fly away?"

"I won't fly away…I will always stay on the ground…Vanechka, do you remember your own words? Both of us are workers of the land, and in the future, we shall have our names side by side in the name of the land. Land is mother…"

He couldn't continue, fearing that he would burst into tears.

"But everyone got mother of their own—that's what you're trying to say?"

"You don't have to think about that." He struggled down from Ivan's arms—he yearned for those arms, but he knew that he would completely give in if lying in there for any longer. "Just keep in mind that I am with you right now…"

The war never ceased to dominate people's destiny in its own way. By the end of January, 1942, several German divisions redeployed from western Europe had turned the Vyazma front back to a favorable situation to the Germans. The war was almost propelled forward by inertia. Offensives were dampened and rhythms broken—it seemed that they would shift back to defence for another peroid of time.

The name list was frequently crossed off to add in new soldiers. Some names were crossed off before they were remembered. In the very recent offensive, the reconnaissance infantry unit suffered trememdous loss once again. Natasha was busy taking care of wounded soldiers and sending them off to the medical tent. Wang Yao, Toris and other unjuried ones were digging graves without a word. Ivan Braginsky was not among the grave diggers. His left shoulder was wounded and his sister just wrapped it up. Now, he sat aside and brushed his left arm hanging from bandage. His gloomy eyes watched the livings placing the deads into freshly digged pits.

As soon as Wang Yao finished his work, he came over and sat down beside him, silently placing one hand on his knee. The company borrowed a big wagon from nearby village, planning to send one person accompanying the wounded soldiers to the medical tent. Wang Yao assumed the role. The wounded soldiers lied down on the straws, quickly falling asleep from the bumpy ride. Only Ivan was sitting upright and silently watching Wang Yao's back as that person drove the horses, as if his gaze could go around to meet that pair of dark round eyes of solitude and contemplation.

When the medical tent appeared in front of their eyes, Wang Yao turned around and rubbed that light blonde hair, "Vanya! Don't worry. Stay here for a short while and you'll come back…"

Wang Yao didn't return immediately since he wanted to wait for the assessment of Ivan's injury. The head nurse whom Wang Yao came to know earlier unwrapped the bandages on Ivan's shoulder, frowned and chatted with the chief physician beside her. She then announced, "Your wound is not severe but it's at a tough location. You must do surgery. We decide to send you to the hospital in Moscow."

"I'm not going anywhere!" Ivan suddenly yelled. "I'm staying right here in the tent. If you don't treat me, then I'll just turn back to the front!"

The head nurse raised those two thin brows in annoyance, "What is wrong with you? Your friend here…" she raised her chin towards Wang Yao, "He was being such a nice boy when he stayed here, but you just have to be difficult…"

"Vanya…" The person standing silently beside him finally opened his mouth, "She is right. Shoulder wound is hard to care. The joint takes longer to heal…"

They both knew! If a wounded soldier stayed at the medical tent, he would be able to return to his original unit after recovery; but if he was sent away to hospital at the rear…then it would be hard to say where he would be assigned to after discharge.

"I'm sorry." Ivan breathed heavily, "But what if I don't go to the hospital? What then?"

"Then it'll be very long. It'll leave you with complications if it did heal." The head nurse answered with complex tone, "If you aren't lucky, you might have to amputate. So, if you want to keep this arm, go to Moscow and have the surgery."

Ivan lowered his head, not talking anymore. He couldn't remember how he got on the truck to Moscow, nor how he said goodbye to Wang Yao. All he remembered was when the truck had driven far away, his eyes were still fixed at that pale-faced person standing on the roadside. The whisper remained in his ears:

"I will find you…There's not a person that Wang Yao cannot find."


	32. Parting

Ch 32 Parting

Only a quarter hour's time elasped since the head nurse's decision till the boarding onto the truck to Moscow. Within this short time, the two sat down, shoulder to shoulder, with one person's hand on the other's knee.

But with whose hand on whose knee? What exactly did they speak to each other? He couldn't remember anything. The sole memory this abrupt farewell left to Wang Yao was when the truck's engine began to roar, Ivan put his head out and said:

"…want to hug you like before…but the left hand…"

It could be his illusion. Since he was busy reminding Ivan to relax and behave that he didn't pay too much attention on what Ivan said. Those words were quickly covered by the soaring engine, and, along with the truck, disappeared onto the Moscow road. He was left alone at the medical tent; his heart at lost and dumbfounded.

Perhaps this abrupt parting was also his illusion. These days, he tried his best not to think about their separation, even though it sat on a day after the war's over. Before that day came, they would have no time to grieve but only time to love.

But everything changed over that one quarter hour's time. No, compared to this dreadful separation that indeed existed, the entire memory Ivan Braginsky left him felt more like a illusion. It was as though there had never been such a person in the world. Like there was never a person kissing him with a desperate passion; never a person caught him off guard and carried him in arms; never a person puffing hot air into his ears that made him tremble, and calling him "My little dark-eyed fool. My naughty little white horse." As if he never sat on a tree trunk, staring at the "И" and "Я" that someone had carved on the bark, and lost in thoughts.

"Vanya!" Like the day he sat on that piece of tree trunk, he called out wordlessly, "Vanya! Where are you? Have you really existed?"

Days had gone by on the front. The name list was updated every day. In the evening of February 2, when Wang Yao and Toris were gnawing black bread at the campfire, the company commander sat down on the other side and lit a cigarette. Those gloomy grey eyes that set far apart were looking at the two soldiers and, with a tone unfamiliar for a commander, he spoke:

"My boys, you don't know how good a scout you are! You've been with me since the war started and you two are the only ones left." He made a rude but non-malicious gesture to the crowd, "Those recruited ones don't look half heart-warming as you guys."

The first batch of infantry scouts assembled in the summer of 1941 was almost depleted entirely by February 1942. The only "old ones" left were Wang Yao and Toris Lorinaitis. "But maybe you two aren't going to stay either." As the word just came out, the commander got up and stepped away.

"Looks like the rumour is true." Fire reflected in Toris' blue eyes like two lonely lighthouses on the Baltic sea. "We will be transferred to somewhere else very soon…"

Wang Yao had heard about it over the last few days: their company would be rearranged to meet the need of current situation of this campaign. The most experienced scouts, i.e. Toris and him, would be moved to other troops. Consequently, even if Ivan could come back to their unit—the chance being very slim—they would never be able to fight together. The confirmed rumour didn't shock nor upset him, only leaving his heart with endless emptiness.

Maybe he should resort to something more optimistic: supposed that they would run into each other in the new troop? No, he'd better not think that way. Russia is vastly big. Once a person was lost, it would be almost impossible to find that person.

He hugged Toris' shoulder. Since the rumour came out, his friend's face was obviously slimming down, the nose became pointier, eyes bigger and on the corner of his mouth emerged some gloomy wrinkles.

"Toris, my good brother, we probably won't be assigned to the same place, right?"

"Tough." Toris replied, muffling his emotions. "You won't be hearing me talking about Natasha anymore."

"You will meet a lot of good friends, Toris!"

"Friends could be plenty, but there'll only be one lover…"

"…It would be hard to find once you lost that person…"

"Yao, how long do you think it takes to fall in love with someone?"

"It took Romeo and Juliet only one night."

"For me, it only took a glance. When I was ten years old, I passed by a girl in the park. I instantly felt that she was all the light and beauty of this world. And because of that, my good friend Feliks didn't talk to me for three days…" A faint smile rose up on Toris' face for the first time in this evening. "That glance has stayed in my memory. I spent nine years until last year when I finally recognized her again in the crowd. That's her—Natasha! It sounds so silly. Do you believe a story like this?"

Wang Yao held his friend's hands tighly:

"I believe it. I really do! You can always find that person when you set your mind to. Even if it's really, really hard…"

"And even many years had passed! I have found her once, and I will find her again. Yao, let's be happier. There will be a day of reunion!" His voice was so agitated that it didn't sound like him. "How much I love to live…...Let's bottom up for this!"

Two enamel cups clinked—the paints already peeled off. Two friends drank up the rationed vodka. Maybe they could drink more, but they felt drunk already.

"Goodbye, my friend, goodbye.

My love, you are in my heart.

It was preordained we should part

And be reunited by and by."

With a somewhat drunken voice, Toris read the last poem written by poet Sergei Esenin. Wang Yao linked their arms like brothers and listend without a word for quite a while, then he suddenly started to sing in Chinese.

When he was still going to school in his hometown, he learned and loved this song. And later in Yan'an, his new friends laughed at him for being sentimental—but the day before he set off to Soviet Russia, it was exactly this song that his little friends sang for him to send him off.

"Outside the pavillion, by the old pathway, green grass joining the sky.

Night wind brushing the willows, flute receded, the sun set behind distant mountains.

At the end of sky and the edge of earth is where my few friends scattered.

A cup of wine to drink up my remaining joy, the dream will be chilly at this parting night."

He didn't drink much, but was out of tune as if he was drunk. The vodka gradually welled up to his face and choked him into tears.

* * *

><p>-TBC<p> 


	33. Moscow Revisited

Ch 33 Moscow Revisited

All windows were cross-taped to prevent shattered glass from hurting people during air raids. Wooden signs of "bomb shelter" were nailed on walls. Sandbags and plywood boards were stacked up on the side of the roads. Fortification structures set up in the previous year remained in streets as Moscow was already prepared for street combats. Luckily, efforts in the front didn't put these defensive structures into use. For a person returning to Moscow from the frontline, everything the eyes could see sent a painful mixture of emotions to his heart.

These were what Wang Yao had seen on February 13, 1942. At noon, after he finished his errands and returned from the city council, he headed directly to the military hospital. People there told him that Braginsky recovered very quickly after the surgery and had just been discharged two hours ago. "He's going to the 62nd army before the seventeenth." said a patient in the same room, "But he said that he was going to visit his sister before he leaves…"

Wang Yao didn't ask any further and left the room. He didn't know where Ivan's sister lived—and what if he did know? Perhaps Ivan already left Moscow. In wartime, railway schedules were often unreliable due to so many unexpected factors, so one usually set out extra time for a planned trip. Perhaps Ivan would drop by their unit on the way, to say goodbye to his comrades—and, of course, to him. But then, the soldiers could only tell him, "Wang Yao already left this morning…"

In a split second, he felt at ease: their reunion was in vain, and so was his planned parting following the reunion. Since he had lost Vanya once, now he wouldn't have to lose him a second time. For hundreds of years, people prepared for separations with tremendous passion, only to savour this bitter wine as they spent time alone in the future. But they only had a quarter hour's time, along with that sentence drowned in the truck engine's soaring sound:

"…want to hug you like before…but the left hand…"

As he walked on the bridge over the Moscow river, Wang Yao looked at the frozen water that was glowing an iron-like shine and thin smokes arisen from the ice. He stood on the bridge for a moment, thinking that he heard the spring tide that was concealed beneath the ice.

"Talking about spring at this time is rather too early. But I think the cranes are about to fly back to Moscow." His mind wandered aimlessly, "Except that they will not meet Vanya or me…"

But right at this moment, he actually met that "all-knowing, all-powerful five-star general" Elizaveta Hedervary. To be exact, she discovered him first and ran from the other side of the bridge, flying to his arms cheerfully.

"I know I will meet you again! I need to catch up with your love life telling!"

…

"The ComIntern leadership was taken away by bad people!" "General" Elizaveta said with a serious face, "Come with me to Hungary, comrade!"

The excitement couldn't hide away her tiredness. The voice told him that this six-year-old girl had been walking for quite a distance. He quickly got everything out from her. The nursery was dedicated for the offsprings of revolutionaries from many different countries and was called "ComIntern" by "General" Elizaveta—of course the leader being her, the "General". But a group of bad people spearheaded by aunt Vera had seized the power, and not only did they ignore her order, but instead often nagged her. Thus, this morning, "General" Elizaveta deserted those snivelling "generals" in bibs and stepped on the glorious and tragic road of exile.

"I tell you everything because I trust you." the shining green eyes stared into his eyes. "All my generals are defeated by the bad people. Only General Feliciano agreed to cover me up, but he didn't want to flee with me…I order you to come with me to Hungary! I have told you that my papa and mama are in the guerilla troop. They are all big heros. The Nazi Germans ran for their lives when they saw them…I have our trip fare here, a silver thimble on top of six roubles…"

"But I'm going to Ural military school. The train leaves in the morning on the day after tomorrow." Wang Yao knelt down to look at the "General" into the eyes, "Come, let me walk you back to the nursery."

"I'm going to find papa and mama!" "General" Elizaveta shouted stubbornly, "I love them. Comrade, don't you want to be together with people you love?"

"How I envy you, general. You can do whatever you wish to do…"

The tenderness and melancholy hidden long inside could be restrained no more and flowed through his voice. Even the self-important "General" could only watch his gloomy eyes and lost for words. In a second, her agile green eyes caught something and the puffy little hand reached out to his neck to touch the skin near his collarbone.

"You're injured?"

Wang Yao nodded. He couldn't see that area, but he was sure the little girl saw a scar. Whipping marks during his captivity would not disappear soon in the near future.

"Does it still hurt?"

Wang Yao shook his head. No, it stopped hurting a long time ago, along with all the scars eyes could see. Ever since he fell into Ivan's arms at the death's door, he could no longer feel pain on skin and flesh. Because they all sneaked into his heart.

"I know you're a brave man! People that are hurt but don't complain are all brave! Lovino isn't. He cried the loudest last week when we had vaccine shots." The little girl raised her thumb, then pulled out from her neck the juju that was contained inside a cloth pouch, "I will ask the juju to give you the best lover! First question: have you ever been in love…"

"I already have the best lover. I love him, and will continue to love him*…"

"Really?" the little girl cheered in her top voice. "Why don't you stay together? When people are in love, they will stay together. Like my papa and mama are fighting together in Hungary…"

"I lost him…Beside, my parents were loving each other, but they spent so little time together…"

He stood up and faced the frozen Moscow river. It was not something shameful for people coming back from the battlefield, but he must turn away his face as to not let the child see the truly painful tears—a man's tears—on the face of a soldier who had withstood the test of war.

When Wang Yao put his eyes on the little girl once again, a glimmer of smile reappeared on his face:

"Accompany me for a walk on the street, my General! I want to see Moscow one more time."

They walked hand in hand. "General" Elizaveta came to know that they had the same identity in the Soviet. She also knew that Wang Yao had a little sister named Chunyan who was exactly twice her age.

"It's so nice to have a big brother like you!" "General" Elizaveta envied, "I don't have a big brother, but Feliciano does. But I don't want a big brother like his!"

"So, you're jealous of Chunyan?"

"I'm not! I have the best papa and mama in the world…"

Through their chit-chat, Wang Yao fooled the little girl to tell him about the nursery's address. Back then, little Chunyan grew up through all his coaxings, so handling little Elizaveta came easily. Now, he was able to bring her back to the street where the nursery was located without her realized.

As they turned around the street, they were discovered by the "bad people" who were looking for this girl. Before the "General" had the chance to throw a resenting glance of trachery, the older nurse, aunt Vera, whom Wang Yao had met last year hurried over, "Liza! Where have you been!"

"I came back to Moscow from the front for some errands." Wang Yao felt that he should be on the little girl's side. "I met little Liza on the bridge and she said that she's going to see her parents. Maybe she missed home. Isn't that what kids do…"

"Kids should be honest! We told her many times, but she just stick with her nonesense…She's not going to see her parents. Her parents were killed before she was sent here…"

Wang Yao took a step back. The jittery little girl turned all red and was tyring to explain, but aunt Vera continued.

"She knew all these things. If you don't believe it, ask her yourself! The people from Hungary who sent her here said that she was in the crowd when the Nazis executed her parents. The red scarf she wears is the only thing her mother left…Comrade, don't think that I am unkind or unreasonable. We are in a war right now. Children should better recognize the reality. What should they do growing up if they keep lying to themselves…"

He cupped her small hands tightly inside his palms, "Liza, is it like what aunt Vera said?"

The little girl trembled, but inside her shaky voice was a disproportionate stubbornness and fierce, "So what if I saw it…I ordered them to come back to life anyway…I'm the General and I can give orders. If it doesn't work then I'll just give another order…"

"People can grow up without a father." Wang Yao wiped away the rolling tears from her small, pale face, "Like me…"

"But you have a mother…"

"Then, you will have to become more courageous than me. Liza, do you understand?"

…Before he left, he looked back at that small figure in front of the nursery for the last time. The scarf—the only thing a mother left to her child—that she was wearing was like a cape worn by all the fearless commanders in history. "General" Elizaveta's parting words still echoed in his ears—she was already in smile,

"Actually, it doesn't matter! See, my papa and mama always fought together, and they went to die together. So, they're still together in my heart. People in love always stay together…"

* * *

><p>*The third-person pronouns (he, him, she, her, etc) are all pronounced the same in Chinese.<p> 


	34. Night

Ch 34 Night

If, during that evening, Ivan could have looked out from his sister's apartment window, he would be able to see the person that occupied his heart for day and night was standing across the street by the nursery. But until Wang Yao and "General" Elizaveta kissed goodbye and left the street, he was still leaning against the window without a clue. People often passed by each other unknowingly.

His big sister, niece and mother—whom came from Bereza to Moscow to look after her pregnant daughter—were all pleasantly surprised by his visit. They blamed him for keeping his hospital stay a secret and only dropping by on the day before returning to duty. "Because I wanted to spend some time alone." Ivan explained apologetically.

Orignally, he planned to stay for a few hours, but ended up staying from morning to evening. He knew that as soon as he left here, he would go directly to his original troop, to hug that lean body one more time and kiss those solitary dark eyes. After that, he would walk away in a soldier's manner and never look back.

No, Vanya, do not disappoint the bullet's kindness. This uninvited guest dived into his left shoulder to bestow them a hurried parting, for the sole purpose of preventing them from drowning in the agony. For people destined to part, tasting the pain alone was kinder and easier on the mind than pouring out to each other. It was exactly based on such regard that fate sent forth a small bullet. It did not treat them too harshly.

Fate would not give him a chance of reversing the destined order. Wang Yao was going to be transferred—maybe he was already on the road by this time. He heard the news from a wounded soldier from the same company just two days prior to his discharge.

"I'm a man of happiness. Whatever I wish to do can all be accomplished!"

The precious, childish pride! It never appeared on him ever since he realized that Wang Yao would leave him one day.

Ivan talked to his mother and big sister with such a state of mind and with a tone of an adult man, not shying away from their womanly look of keenness and sympathy. His sister sighed, "Vanechka…maybe I shall call you Vanya from now on. You are a grown man after all…"

His eyes fell on the wall above his sister's head where her wedding photo was hanging. In the photo, his sister was wearing that favorite dress, and was happier and more beautiful than any moments in her brother's memory. Beside her stood the young and handsome pilot, Andrei Orlov. It was this man who brought his sister to Moscow seven years ago.

"Andrei!" he exclaimed without words to his brother-in-law's lively and cheerful eyes, "You are the one who got it all…"

Just then, the door bell rang. Little Lyuba ran to the door like always. The postman's silhouette flashed through the door, then Lyuba waved a letter in her hand triumphantly, about to run back to them—in a split of second, Ivan saw it clear as day. Regular letters from the frontier would be folded into triangles, but this one was contained in a white, rectangular envelope.

"Stop!"

Ivan yelled with a terrifyingly loud voice, then rushed there in large steps and grabbed the letter from his dumbfounded niece. Now, he could already see the military postmark and typewritten address. He ripped open the envelope and, after finished reading the first line, crumbled the letter inside his spasdic palms.

"Come back!" He ran to the window and waved his fist to the street covered in dusk, yelling furiously, "Wrong address! We don't accept stuff like this!"

But the postman already got out from the next unit, mounted his bicycle and fleet as if running for his life. A heart-broken howling came from next door.

He turned around with weakness, finding his sister stiffly lying in bed and her face became bloodless. His mother's white-haired head snuggled next to her daughter's face and whimpered something in low voice. Only little Lyuba was staring at him in fright with eyes wide-open. His clenched fist loosened and the crumpled letter fell on the floor. It was a letter that could not possibly be false. The letter could not be crumpled, amended, torn or burned. It was a piece of paper of eternal proof—"killed in action".

The night outside suffused into the room.

"Let me draw up the curtain and turn on the light." Ivan finally broke the dead silence.

He heard his sister's tiny voice, "What does light have to do in a widow's room…"

"There needs to be light. A hero's soul is bright. How can we mourn for him in darkness?"

As the room was lit up once again, little Lyuba walked to Ivan and pulled his sleeve. "Uncle," she whispered, "What's a widow?"

In Lyuba's five years' of life, this was the first time she heard the word. Before he figured out how to reply, his sister's screaming outcry scared Lyuba to have fearfully grabbed his body.

The first thought came into his mind was to send her to the hospital. But as an experienced woman, his mother instead said, "Lyuba! Go upstairs to fetch aunt Ilinichna! Vanya, you go sit in the study…"

…He was sitting in the study, hearing all the sounds from outside: his sister's crying and screaming from the unbearable pain; the instructions from Ilinichna, the obstetrician; the bustling commotions from his mother and other female neighbors who came over to help; little Lyuba's bewildered sobbing…At this moment, among the women's nervousness and grief, Ivan felt absolutely useless. He fixed his eyes on a photo underneath the glass top of the desk—there, air force captain Andrei was looking at him with a broad smile. How handsome, confident, brave and full of joy—Ivan Branginsky's brilliant brother-in-law.

"Andrei…would a person like you die, too? Yao, would a person like you die, too? And me…would a person like me die, too…"

The boundless passion and faith towards the youthful life inside his heart broke open a crack in that very second. He just wanted to cry out loud. But then, from the top shelf he brought down a box full of paints, brushes and canvas. Influenced by her uncle, five-year-old little Lyuba already started her painting lessons.

Where seperated by a wall was the mourning for death and the welcome of a new life. In this very moment, an extraordinarily fierce emotion urged Ivan Braginsky to make the painting. It was not the sketch made by half a pencil on a small piece of paper at the frontline; it was like the times before the war when he used to paint formally with brushes on canvas. He couldn't stop, as if all the inspirations from the past and future all joined together under his brush in this sorrowful night.

"Vanya! You are life itself!"

His loved one's voice abruptly came up in this small room, overwhelming the scream and crying from a wall's distance away, overwhelming the rumbling sound of bombing in the faraway battlefield, overwhelming the roaring wind above the tombs of deceased soldiers, overwhelming all imaginable honours, and death. And life.

"This, is life…"

As he finally put down the brush, he could no longer hold back and hot tears rolled down his face.

In front of him was a true portrait. Solemn, bright, tender and frank—Wang Yao was staring at him from the canvas like a real person. The dark round eyes were painted last and, just as Wang Yao had said, were truly like drawing eyes for a dragon.*

"This is life…"

When the paint had dried, the day broke out the first light outside the window. He rolled up the canvas with great care and carried it under his coat. Just then, he heard a loud and clear cry, and then, his big sister's weak but firm voice, "Bring me my little Andrei…"

It was decided at that moment that this little boy would grow up bearing his deceased father's name. Ivan walked out of the study, looked over everyone's shoulders at that small baby with warmheartedness, then quietly sneaked out the door. He almost bumped into Natasha at the doorway.

"Vanya! I was finally permitted to leave. I hurried over there, but they said that you were discharged. So I thought you must've come here…" With another sound of the baby's cry, Natasha's face first flashed through a moment of astonishment, then smile, "What a surprise! A nephew or a niece?"

"Aunt Natasha!" Lyuba ran to her like a little bird. Natasha leaned down, then Lyuba said in a low, mysterious voice, "I have a little brother! And there was a letter yesterday, and mama said she's widow now. She's so sad! But nobody told me what a widow is. I don't want to see mama being sad, so I decide to be a widow with mama together. Auntie, come and be widow with us. Everybody be widow so mama won't feel so lonely…"

Lyuba chattered without stop, but Ivan already ran down the street as if running for his life, like that postman who delivered death notices.

* * *

><p>*"Drawing eyes on a dragon" = Chinese proverb meaning to put the finishing touch<p> 


	35. Natasha!

Ch 35 "Natasha!"

"I decide to be widow with mama together. Auntie, join us…"

Natasha wasn't able to stay at her big sister's apartment for too long before she had to return to the base. The troop only approved her for one day's leave and most of the time would be spent on the road. But no matter how much she hurried her steps, she felt that she couldn't escape from her sister's home. Looking through the frozen tears on her eyelashes, she thought that it was not snowflakes that were falling down the sky, but women's miserable crying that overwhelmingly surrounded her from everywhere.

Sister's crying, mother's crying, niece's crying, and the cryings of all the female neighbors who had already or would soon become widows. Only her little nephew's crying wasn't out of grief, but to prove to the world of his own existence. The only one not crying was her brother-in-law inside photo frames. From the walls, through the glass top on the desk, and from the crumpled letter of death notice, he gazed upon the orphaned children and widowed mothers' fate without sorrow nor pain.

The cursed fate of women! Before the war, Natasha searched for the stories of wonderful women in literature. Even though their fates were somehow ungratifying, they all had breathtaking love affairs nonetheless. In War and Peace, there was Natasha Rostova; in Rodin, there was Natasha Rasonskaya; even Pushkin's wife, "the most beautiful woman in Russia", was called Natasha Goncharova. As for herself—could Natasha Braginskaya, an ordinary student from Moscow, become one of those women in real life? Would Tolstoy write out her stories? Would Turgenev feel gloomy for her? Or would Pushkin fell down in the duel for her? So, she decided to become a singer. Only on the stage could she become a graceful and empowered woman who could love and suffer without losing her self-esteem.

She graduated from high school with a long blond plait and a beautiful low voice for singing. But before she was able to encounter a wonderful love story, the war came toward her. She only met Toris Lorinaitis. So far, she would only admit that he was a dependable person. Ever since that starry night of new year's eve under his out-of-tuned accordion's accompaniement, she sang a song about a girl missing her fiance, something seemed to have changed.

…But nothing seemed to have changed.

As she arrived the base with a myriad of emotions inside, that quiet and polite young man didn't show up in her sight as usual. Instead, the quartermaster handed her a letter and blamed her,

"Young lady, why didn't you tell someone before you took your leave? And returned at this hour… This is from Lorinaitis."

Maybe he was still shy and put his words on paper—he could just tell her in front of her. Anything, really…at least she thought so as she opened the letter.

_"Dear Natasha, my singing little star! I will become twenty years old by February 16. But I want to tell you everything in the remaining time of my nineteenth years of life. In this difficult but wonderful year of nineteen, I found you again. You must have been to the Baltic seaside in the spring of 1932, right? I was ten years old then, taking a walk at the seaside park. In front of me came a little blond girl. When we went past each other, I discovered the radiance of joy in her eyes, as if all the light and beauty of the entire world belonged to her. I stood there watching her back for a long time, as if bewitched. If I wasn't so shy at the time, I would run up to her for her name…Because of this, my good friend Feliks had a quarrel with me. Later, when I grow up, I realized that I had loved her since that very moment, like loving life. Even though life had taken away so much from me, it still loves me—and brought me to meet you again nine years later. Yes, after the first sight, I recognized that you were that lovely girl. I'm not afraid of fighting, because I know what I am fighting for—for the life upon this land and for all the bright and beautiful things in life. Among everything, there is you…"_

Natasha raised her head looking towards the distance; there were traces of tears in her eyes.

"But I have never been to the Baltic Sea in my life! Never!" she uttered, "But what does it matter? Shall I tell him the truth and disappoint him…thereby, disappointing myself?"

As Natasha moved her eyes back to the letter, a sentence that she missed jumped into her sight, _"I will report to the 55th army by February 14…"_

"Oh my God." She murmured nervously, "Oh my God…"

It was not that she never heard of the rumor about Toris' redeployment these days, but it seemed to be complete nonesense to her. This Lithuanian young man had unwittingly become a part of her life. Now, he was going to leave her—how absurd, how cruel, and how unimaginable.

She hurriedly looked around like a person drowning in water and the first one she saw was the quartermaster. Natasha ran over and grabbed his arm, "When? Really? When did he leave…"

"Yesterday when you left to Moscow without telling anyone. Lorinaitis had no time to say goodbye to you, so he wrote a letter and asked me to give it to you. He just left about two hours ago and will take the train from Moscow…"

Natasha didn't hear the rest as she already ran onto the road, stopped a logistic truck heading to Moscow and hopped on. The quartermaster shouted from far behind, "They will ground you…"

As the truck passed the Bryansk train station in Moscow, she hopped down, hurried inside but found no sign of military trains. She remembered that Moscow had nine train stations.

He would be transferred to 55th army…The 55th army was fighting around Leningrad…The train to Leningrad would usually leave from October station…" October station!" She pressed one hand on her chest and called out loud in an almost manly voice.

But the truck that brought her here already left. Natasha had to take the trolley bus. When she finally ran onto the crowded platform of October station, a sea of army coats led to her desperate realization that it would be almost impossible to find one person.

"Has the military train to Leningrad already left yet?" she asked to a dispatcher near her. It was a tired-looking middle-aged woman wearing babushka. Since most men had already gone to the front, women assumed many jobs such as this.

"They will report to the Paveletsky station and go from there. It will go through the line of October station but there's no stop…" Perhaps the dispatcher noticed the girl's tearful swollen eyes, "Are you going to Leningrad? You won't catch the train from Paveletsky for sure. It's passing here very soon, but it won't slow down. Young girl, wait till tomorrow. You'll only be late for one day…"

"…Only late for one day…" Natasha murmured and covered her face. She could feel her tender little hands had become rough from exposure to the harsh weather at the front. She belonged to the front. Everyone at the front should be faithful to their jobs. No, she could not go to Leningrad…

—But she just wanted to see him once more before their parting, even if just one glance…And perhaps, if possible, tell him something…Wasn't that people would always say something to each other before they part? She remembered that when Andrei left for the war, her big sister said, "I will wait for you…"

All of a sudden, from the deepest of her soul burst out a shrill wail. The thundering rumble came from one end of the rail. The military train to Leningrad, departed from Paveletsky station, was about to pass the station.

"Back off, back off!" the dispatcher waved a small flag and shouted to the crowd on the platform. "This train doesn't stop! This train doesn't stop…"

But Natasha had already been running with the train. The wheels carrying the sounds of accordions, singings and soldiers' conversations clanked against the rails and flew past her.

"Natasha!"

The loud calling hit her head-on, as if a young man grabbed her running body and pulled into his embrace.

There, beside an open door stood him, Toris Lorinaitis. He held the door with one hand and the other hand waved his cap at her. The brown messy hair in the wind that covered his face felt more intimate than ever. The lower hem of his army coat rattled in wind, like spreaded wings of an eagle before the take-off.

"Natasha!"

She felt like she was flying. Hurry, call out something to him in this fleeting moment. Even just his name! But she couldn't make a sound, perhaps from too haste of the running…

"Natasha!"

The train had already carried him away and disappeared into the far distance, but she could still hear her own name been called. Not just from him, but from the wooden ties and rail tracks, the handrails, the crowds on the platform, and what behind her—the entire Moscow that remained the last stand—they all called out to her, "Natasha!"

Natasha sat on the ground and cried out loud. It was not weeping, but in a terribly dreadful sound like a country woman wailing for husband.

Several people knelt down beside her, trying to help her up. The female dispatcher's tiring voice came to her ears, "Young girl, who are your sending off? Your brother?"

"No…"

"Then who? Husband?"

She couldn't breathe from the crying. All she could do was nodding neurotically.

And thus, Natasha married herself off. Her wailing was the wedding music. Her worn-out army coat was the bride's wedding dress. All the people on the platform who had gone through and would continue to go through the cruel test of war were the most honourable guests on the wedding.


	36. Mother's Letter

Ch 36 Mother's Letter

In this sorrowful evening, little Lyuba was handed from the postman of her father's death notice; in a student apartment on another street, a small window on the second floor lit an orange light. In a second, the light was quickly hidden behind the thick curtains. The young resident of this room just returned from the battlefront and for a moment had forgotten the rule among Moscow citizens. For the purpose of civil defence from air raids, one must close the curtains before turning up the light.

Lamp, curtain, desk and textbooks. Wang Yao gently brushed away the thin layer of dust that covered everywhere. They had kept the appearances before he enlisted, reminding him like faithful friends that this small and plain room had witnessed his three years of high school he spent in Moscow.

Wang Yao sat down before the desk and took out a letter from his chest pocket. They handed it over to him in the morning when he was running his errands. It had pressed against his heart for a whole day until he got back to the apartment and sat still, but his agitated fingers could no longer wait to open this letter coming from his homeland.

As this thick letter of five pages unfolded in front of him, what he recognized first were the fragrance of millet porridge and iris flowers. Wang Yao pressed his face on the paper. The water vapor of Yanhe river from thousands of miles away climbed onto the corner of his eyes in an instant. He quickly raised his head. His sister's immature handwriting on the first page dived into his heart like a lovely swallow.

At the beginning of the letter, his sister still called him "brother Yao" like a little girl and asked him when he would come back home. Then, like the letter before, she reported to him what new friends she made and new songs she had learned, and added somewhere in a serious tone, _"Everybody is pulling together to fight the war. Brother, you focus on the war over there too. Don't worry about us."_

Everytime he read his sister's letter, he would be able to guess the next sentence from the last, but the following paragraph caught him off guard. _"…Mama said that you're already eighteen and become a man. So you must have found a person you love? What does that person look like? Good-looking? Prettier than me? Only the best of the best could match my brother. I've always believed that. Brother, don't try to hide from me. I'm almost twelve years old and you can't fool me anymore. You can love that person, but if you forget me and Mama, I'll never talk to you…"_

Suddenly, Wang Yao was bewildered to find out that his little sister from faraway had seen right through him. It was as if she had lived inside his heart all along and saw all his tenderness and melancholy. "You will always be inside brother's heart."—on the day he left home when tearful Chunyan put her arms around his waist, not letting him go, wasn't it how he comforted her?

His chest hurt a little. He pressed his hand on it and continued reading. His sister only wrote less than a page. All four pages after that were from his mother's beautiful handwritings:

…_Chunyan fell asleep before she finished. I saw what she was writing. She was a little girl after all. These days, she had been asking me about your father and wanted to know why I ended up with him back then. I never explained to you kids because I thought that you were too young, and that it hurt to recall. But just as she said, both of you have grown up._

_Back then, I was like you right now, eighteen years old. Come to think of it now, eighteen is a dangerous age. As soon as you decided to love and trust someone, you would almost want to sacrifice everything you had. No matter how difficult it might be afterward, you wouldn't regret, because regretting means to betray your own youthful past…_

_I met your father during the May Fourth Movement. He was only twenty, but was already known as a student leader in Beiping*. I didn't know why, but I fell in love with him and wanted to believe in all the ideas he promoted, but I didn't expect the love in return. He was surrounded by so many intelligent, brave, energetic and well-learned girls, and I was only a quiet and muddle-headed student…Long after, he finally admitted that he fell for me in first sight, but had been restraining his feelings. "Forget me!" he said. "You will suffer with me, because I can't dedicate my entire heart to you alone, but to the entire country…"_

_If it was merely an affection beforehand, then, after those words, I decided to marry him. He was always on the run and the lives of the three of us haven't been easy. You know all that, since you have been such a good boy when you were little. For a while, you delivered newspaper after school to help with the money. Those little hands were red and swollen from the cold winter. How could a mother forget those things…But you never complained, and in turn comforted me. And I never complained either. Ever since the moment I decided to love him, there was nothing I would mind…except that I always felt that it's not fair for the two of you…Later, when he brought us to Yan'an and left for the Northeast to fight the war, he said to me before he left, "After the revolution succeeds…" I knew what he would promise me and I would very much love to wait, but he didn't allow me to continue waiting…_

_But if I could go back in time, I would still choose to be with your father without hesitaiton, because he was a true man. He already gave me enough beautiful and happy memories in our unfrequent gatherings so I have the courage to face the future. And he left me with two most beautiful, most lovable and most understanding children in the world…Yao, you are an adult. If you met a person worth of your love, then go loving. I only wish that you could be happier than me. Back then, your father had said to me, "When our kids grow up, they will never have to separate from the people they love. This is what I'm fighting for…"_

_You mentioned in your last letter that you joined the Soviet Red Army. I can't imagine what exactly you look like. But I often dreamed of you being injured and needed someone to look after. I would always wake up as I reached out my arms to hug you, then found that the pillows were wet…Forgive me, Yao! I should have written something more inspiring, but I can't help but to have those dreams. Don't blame me, no mother in the world is rational…All I wish is to have a person to love you and save you in dire situations. If my life could trade you such a person, then your mother would gladly sacrifice whatever she has…_

_Alright...I will say no more. Dear child, I wish you safety and happiness…_

"Mama! Dear mama!"

He didn't dare to hold the letter against his face, fearing the hot tears would dampen it. So he pressed it on his heart, as if that was his mother's hand, roughened from years of heavy physical work.

Mother. It was the mothers during the war who courageously suffered the most tremendous distress—the almost horrifying worries and longings of their sons and daughters. Apart from thousands of miles of turmoil, she opened her arms to him again and again in dreams, but only to wake up before she could reach him. When he lay in the German commanding centre with body covered in wounds, there was a pair of rough chapped hands hugging him into her arms and sending cool water to his mouth, relieving his agony. Only mama had such power…He called out to her, "Mama, good old mama!"

It was a face of a plain Russian woman. Under the blue babushka there was a pair of sad violet eyes. When she was looking after him, she was still talking about his Vanechka. In his memory, this violet eyes of a mother superimposed with the other pair of dark eyes thousand of miles away.

At this moment, how much he wished to share this emotion with a good friend! But tonight, the only live thing he could converse with was the crackling fire. It clamoured in a good spirit like a clever, playful little girl. She knew everything, but wished to say nothing, only to lure others running after her with questions.

"Ah, you little fool. You don't know anything!" said he.

For the whole night, he sat there facing the fireplace. When the sky was about to light up, he pulled the curtain and opened the window, as if to receive the entire city of Moscow into this humble room, to listen to his talking.

Moscow granted him with a snowy sky. A man in army coat walked through the snow and down to the street.

"It's so early, where is he going?" he thought. "He's in a haste…should've popped up those collars. Otherwise, the snow will melt in his neck."

As the man walked nearer, Wang Yao covered his face with his two hands. After a moment, he took down the hands—his eyes glittered and a rosy color surfaced his pale cheeks.

Wang Yao ran down the stairs, not noticing when his coat had fallen from his shoulders. He pushed open the door, rushed into the snow, and finally caught up the man by the street lamp. He grabbed his arm, "Vanya!"

* * *

><p>*Beiping: later known as Beijing<p> 


	37. Diary

Ch 37 Diary

On the desk there were black bread and vodka, and beside it was a single bed Wang Yao just made. Now, he sat in a chair by the desk watching Ivan who was sitting on his bed wolfing down the food.

"If you are tired, go lay down for a bit."

After Wang Yao led Ivan into his room, he dug out his beddings and made the bed which had been empty for half a year. For some reason, he always thought that Ivan's shoulder wound hadn't healed and worry that Ivan would need to rest in bed any time. In those difficult years, people treated their beloved ones like treating the wounded and the young.

But as soon as Ivan sat down on his bed, he began devouring the food that Wang Yao just brought out. He ate and swallowed hastily, as if using these coarse grains and alcohol to keep down the sadness in his heart.

"Stop that!"

With annoyance and soreness inside, Wang Yao reached out the right hand, trying to wipe away the bread crumbs on Ivan's chin. But before he realized, his wrist was locked by Ivan's forceful grip causing him to suddenly lose balance and fell on the bed after a few stumbles. He sat side by side with Ivan.

Wang Yao knew that if Ivan didn't want to let go of him, there was no use struggling. Like the moment they met again just moments ago, this large young man surrounded his arms around him for the longest time, as though by releasing his embrace, the person in his arms would fly away like the dragon whose eyes were just painted on. Finally, Wang Yao had to tiptoed to his ear and coaxed him for a while before he released the person from the solid embrace. It reminded Wamg Yao of his childhood when his sister got lost and was found by him, he would have to comfort her for a long time before she was willing to come out from his arms.

"You don't have to pity me!" Ivan said with mumbling voice, "I'm two years older than you…"

But the terrible pain hidden in those violet eyes eroded Wang Yao's heart. He didn't know what to do, so he gently covered the empty left hand over Ivan's eyes. Could his hand be like his mother's hand that could take away all pains and sorrows?

"Vanya, I'm leaving tomorrow. I went to the city council and they permitted me to study in the military school. I will go back to the front three months later."

His gesture was intimate, but his voice was so plain as if talking about someone else's problem. Ivan was sitting still, allowing Wang Yao's left hand covering his eyes, but his mouth didn't stop mocking him.

"So you've got a great plan. Three months later, you will be lieutenant. Finally ahead of me, ha! Well, I can almost imagine when we meet again: I would be busy hugging you and kissing you, but unfortunately forgot to salute you—'Offending your superior! Soldier Braginsky, you'll go to detention!'"

As he spoke, Ivan raised his empty right hand and grabbed the other person's left hand—he felt that Wang Yao was shivering—now, both hands were under his control. Before he finished the last word, he thrusted from the side and the defenceless Wang Yao was thrown in bed.

The head hurt from smashing the bed, but compared to Ivan's tormenting words, it was not worth mentioning.

"I have warned you before. I'm also very good at taking captives." Ivan said unhurriedly. But Wang Yao didn't struggle, only mindlessly staring at the ceiling. No, he could had completely defended it, but he never thought about defending Ivan.

Ivan threw himself on top of him. Wang Yao's heart was beating anxiously under that broad chest.

"Yao! You have always wanted to go to military school, isn't it…You didn't go because of me." The hot puffs of air from Ivan's low voice made him tremble. "Now that I can't go back to our unit anyway, you can go wherever you want…"

Wang Yao turned away his face and his ears brushed over Ivan's lips. He burried his face deeply in his scattered dark hair, only leaking out a few broken words.

"Going to military school…only then, I could possibly be assigned to a new troop three months later…and meet you again….

"Russia is big. Once you lost a person, it would be very hard to find him again." Ivan raised his head and stuck his lips beside his ear, determined to trap him inside the disappointing conversations. "Well, but you didn't really dream for us to meet again? Who can assure you that you'll be assigned to the 62nd army? Besides, there are so many division insdie an army group…"

Ivan empited one hand and forced Wang Yao's face towards himself. Hair left a few strands of marks on his pale face.

"Why your eyes turn red, Lieutenant? What kind of soldiers will listen to you in the future?"

"I must meet you again." He heard Wang Yao's muttering voice. "I must stay with you before the war ends, because afterwards I will go back to my country…"

Ivan gingerly reached out the right arm from behind and helped this slender body to sit up. His left hand gently brushed through the messy dark hair.

"Really?"

"I'm going into the infantry school, so when I come out, I'll still become lieutenant of a reconnaissance unit. Vanechka, the Milky Way is the road of scouts, do you think that I'll ever leave it behind?"

He, Ivan Braginsky, envied this small room; he envied this lamp, the window curtain, the desk and the humble-sized bed. In the peroid of time unknown to him, they accompanied Wang Yao for three years in his youthful life; but for himself, there was only about half a year's time from the first day they met till this parting day that neither knew when their next reunion would be. He even envied those immortal names on the bookshelf: Darwin, Mendel, Schleiden, Linne, Pavlov…Among the works of these great biologists there mixed a plain-looking notebook. Ivan took it out.

"That's my diary before the war, Vanya."

"I'll take a good look! I'll see what the hell you have done in the three years that I don't know about!" Ivan waved that diary in his hand mischievously. He was only teasing, but didn't expect that Wang Yao actually nodded. With the awkwardness from his unsuccessful prank, he went ahead and flipped through it from cover to cover without finding a word that he knew.

Wang Yao couldn't resist the urge and started laughing.

"Oh, you…" He could barely lift himself up from the laughing, "When we were little, Chunyan always peeked at my diary, but she hadn't learned reading yet! You're exactly like her…"

"Then read a paragraph to me! This page. But don't translate into Russian. I want to hear your language."

"I can't translate it anyway. It's a poem…"

Wang Yao stood up and took a good look at Ivan. In this ordinary student dormitory room in Moscow, there was a voice from the Far East:

A white horse gallops in its golden gear  
>As if in flight to north western frontier.<br>Who is the cavalier in hurry great?  
>A gallant hero of the northern state.<br>While he was young, he left his native land;  
>His name was known as far as border sand.<br>Since then he's learned to draw the strongest bow  
>And shoot arrows of hard wood high and low.<p>

As Wang Yao read on, the poem was as if pouring from his heart; as if the poem was Wang Yao himself. Ivan quietly listened to this foreign language of varying tones. In his lover's solemn, natural and sincere voice, the ancient country that he had never met before opened her sufferring but resilient arms to him.

"No, a person like this will not die." Ivan said to himself wordlessly, "Could this poem die?"

Wang Yao stepped forward and his face was instantly lighted up by the poem.

…

At the point of the sword in the hard strife,  
>How could he care for individual life?<br>He'd take no heed of his father and mother,  
>Let alone wife, children or any other.<br>Of heroes brave his name is on the roll;  
>He would not care when his death knell would toll.<br>The state at stake, he would give his last breath.  
>Would a homegoing soul fear to face death? *<p>

"What is the poem writing about?" Ivan asked in low voice, "Yao, what is it about?"

"About me."

* * *

><p>"Song of the White Horse<strong>"<strong>, by Cao Zhi (192~232)

Translated by Xu Yuanzhong


	38. Reunion

Ch 38 Reunion

"That's what I thought." Ivan looked at those dark round eyes, "Although I can't understand a word."

"You don't need to understand the poem," He turned around with his back facing Ivan, "All you need to know is that it's about me…"

Ivan stepped up to him and surround his left arm around Wang Yao's chest, pulling that lean figure into his embrace. His right hand picked up the canvas roll from the desk where he placed as he first entered the room. He gently loosened Wang Yao's clenched fist and placed the canvas roll in his palm.

"Of course it's you. How could it not be you!"

The painting unfolded in Wang Yao's hand.

"Yes, Vanechka… This is me." Wang Yao's shoulder trembled in his arms, "This is me!"

"It only took me one night to paint you. I thought I could never see you again."

This was him! This was life itself! And this was the portrait of his beloved one composed last night amongst mourning the dead and welcoming the newborn. That night, all the inspirations between the horizons came to the humble room where the young artist was and condensed under his eyes, his brush and his heart into the face of his lover. That night, the young artist didn't know that dawn would arrange them to meet again and then, the next, would grant them parting once more.

"I really didn't want to paint you eyes." Ivan maintained his posture allowing Wang Yao to lean in his arms, "In your words, perhaps, I was finally willing to let you go…"

He felt that Wang Yao wanted to turn around and look at him. So he tensed up his hands, not letting the person in his arms to move, preventing those dark round eyes from looking into his heart. They stood facing the open window for who knows how long. The heavy snow floated on top of this silent street was like a screen of white muslin. Cold wind brought snowflakes onto their heads and shoulders, as if a dragon was letting them know about its departure.

"Let go of me, Vanya."

He released his arms, defeated and watched Wang Yao closing the window.

Wang Yao carefully folded the painting, unbuttoned the jacket and put it inside his chest pocket. Then, he took out a pendant from his neck. The pendant was wrapped around with a delicate cloth bag so one could not see what was inside.

Ivan didn't remember seeing this amulet thing on Wang Yao. Before he could ask, Wang Yao's hands brushed through his hair and neck, and put the pendant on his neck.

"Wear it! I have a little friend here. Yesterday she was deteremined to give it to me as a souvenir."

Ivan answered half-jealously, "The little girl was in love with you, but you gave her love-token to someone else."

"Listen to yourself!" Wang Yao laughed and shook his head. After a while, he was reluctant to add, "She said that it can bring you safety and happiness. She used it to find lovers for other people…"

"So it brought you to me?" Ivan placed the juju in his palm and carefully examined the little bag. "Then I must see what this little thingy looks like."

"You can't open the bag. She said that you must wait till the day of victory." Wang Yao covered Ivan's palm from below and said formally, "So, live till the day of victory, Vanya!"

Ivan grabbed that slender wrist but his dragging voice had a hint of blame. "Ah—ha—good. Very good. What about yourself?"

"Oh you…Aren't these enough…" Wang Yao took out three things from his shirt pocket and arranged them on the desk with great care.

The first thing was a small photo. It was a memento with his mother and sister before Wang Yao left the country.

The second thing was a small piece of starry sky. The "road of scouts" extended to faraway from the small piece of paper. It was created by the young astronomy student Toris, depicting the brilliant starry night when Ivan carried Wang Yao back to the base.

The third thing was a carefully folded canvas. It was himself under his lover's brush.

All the pure love of family, friend and lover adhered to this dark-haird man's heart—a soldier's fervent heart—that would accompany him for the long and difficult years of war in the future.

Ivan picked up the small photo. The three people on the photo were unfamiliar but amiable. Three years ago, Wang Yao was only fifteen or sixteen years old—the contour of his face was gentler than now and there was a sense of childishness in those eyes. Beside him was a little girl about nine years old. Her dark hair was braided into two pigtails and those big glittering eyes were very lovable. Ivan wanted to look more of this little girl, but his eyes stayed on Wang Yao's mother for a long time.

There were such women in the world that beneath their smile there always remained unresolvable sadness that could not be removed or solaced. They were apt to divert burdens and pains from other people onto themselves, bearing it all alone but still appeared dignified. Thus, in their eyes there was always a strength as if possessing complete insight of everything but chose to keep silent—a look of comtemplation and solitude. Like what he had seen in Wang Yao's eyes. This look fell into his eyes in an instant and had remaind there for seventy years.

"You're so much like your mother." Ivan murmured, "Especially those eyes…"

"Guess how old she is, Vanya? Looks like almost fifty? But in fact, she's not yet forty this year." Wang Yao sighed, "I still remember your mother. She looks almost like a grandma, but she must be younger…"

"Only forty-eight… You're right. Mothers get old fast… " Suddenly, Ivan hugged his shoulder and said excitedly beside his ears, "You didn't know how much my mother worried about you… She was so happy that she cried when she knew I saved you… "

The snow stopped in the evening.

As required by light control, Ivan first closed the window and the curtain, then switched on the desk lamp. But as soon as the orange light filled the small room, he suddenly lifted a corner of the curtain and placed his forehead on the window glass like a little boy, silently gazing over the dark night outside.

"Like what you said…how much I want to live to the victory day!" Ivan turned around and spoke with an almost ferocious tone, "I will open all the windows and turn on all the lights and take a good look at Moscow in bright lights. Wait and see. On that day, nobody in Moscow will turn off the light."

"Let's not talk about the future. Vanya, do you know what day is it today?"

"February 14, an ordinary day. What for?"

"In my country, today is the New Year's Eve." Wang Yao's eyes contained a distant joyfulness, "Today is when all the families reunite. Nobody turn off the lights."

Ivan smiled bitterly, "When the war's over, you'll reunite with your mother…"

"Listen, Vanya!" Wang Yao clenched his hand, "I'm really, really thankful to spend this New Year's Eve with you together...and I must tell you—"

—"You look so much like your mother! Vanya, especially those eyes."

…

"You're tired, Vanya. Go to sleep…"

"Why would I sleep? Why? When I wake up, we will have to say goodbye…"

"I already find a solution, for real! When you wake up, goodbye will have nothing to do with us. I promise…"

"Really?"

"Why would I lie to you? Vanya, go sleep…"

"Fine, but you'll need to sleep with me!"

"Same as I thought…"

"So you agree, Yao! Aren't you afraid that I might treat you like a girl in the middle of the night…"

"…Well, I'll forgive this joke of yours…although it's your worst one yet…"

"Why you stop talking, my naughty little white horse?"

"I know you never treat me as a girl, never! You said that to me before. Where could you find a girl that's as good as me…"


	39. 62th Army

Ch 39 62th Army

"Go to sleep…sleep for a while, Vanechka…"

Ivan knew that Wang Yao was caring him, but what he heard was "Don't sleep. Just talk with me for a little more!"

Wang Yao's hair band was soaked wet inside his clenched fist. When Wang Yao lay down beside him and meekly snuggled into his arms, he neurotically snatched it off and burried his face in the loose dark hair, breathing the aroma from the forest and the field. His lover was the forest and the field—he was life itself.

A strand of long hair got into the shirt collar, lying on a scar near the collarbone. He gingerly pressed on it with his finger, feeling his lover's blood pulsing faintly. Then he adhere his lips onto the proof of tenacity and muttered,

"You were tortured…but I wasn't by yourside, you were tortured…"

His right hand lifted Wang Yao's shirt, caressing that slender waistline and the absent bruise that was foreverly lodged in his heart. His lover only kept the face burried under his neck, and his Adam's apple felt a moment of rain…

…And this was everything remained in his memory. All the rest sank into the impalpable dreams.

"When you wake up, goodbye will have nothing to do with us…"

He felt the first ray of morning light tapped his eyelashes. So he reached out his hand and touched the space beside him.

His palm was met with emptiness.

Ivan sat up and looked around the room; his mind at a loss. His lover sneaked out of his arms without him knowing, packed up his belongings and left. What a wonderful job. An excellent scout afterall. Wang Yao didn't lie to him: all that was about the goodbyes—handshakes, hugs, kissings, parting words and even tears had gone along with his lover without a sound, turning into bubbles. And so, goodbyes really didn't concern them.

After a moment of thought, he was at ease. He jumped up like a soldier and quickly put on his clothes. Time stopped for one day and one night in this small room in Moscow. Now, it began racing once more and joint into the rumbling battle faraway, relentlessly counting life's every single minute.

The room was clean and empty, only Wang Yao's diary was left on the desk and was turned into a new page where inks still hadn't completely dried. It was probably what Wang Yao left for him, but he couldn't read it.

On top of the page there was a small piece of bark, with a heart shape carved on it; inside were two letters: "И" and "Я".

He cherished that piece of bark inside his chest pocket, determined never to be separated from it. But he didn't think that he was capable of carrying that most valuable diary with him, so he sent it home from the post office. Then he headed toward the train station.

As he walked past the nursery on the opposite side of his sister's home, children were playing near the entrance. Among them was a little girl about six years old. Her glittering green eyes stared at the pendant hanging from his neck.

He lifted her up high, "Why are you looking at me, young lady? Do you know me?"

"I don't know who you are, but I know who you love!"

"Then do you know where my lover is?"

"In the heart!" The little girl pat her chest like a lofty general, "People who love each other are always together, right here inside the heart. My papa and mama are…"

He put her down. Her laughing was like a nimble skylark dancing into the depth of sky with feathers that were bright as the frosted dawn.

On February 17, 1942, Ivan Braginsky arrived the Volga river and reported to the 33rd division subordinate to the 62nd army group. In the beginning of March, he received Wang Yao's first letter from the Ural military school. There was only one sentence in the letter:

"Today, the cranes flew back to the north."

As if to prove that this young biologist wasn't lying, the white cranes' singing came to the small island inside the Volga river. Their sounds were extensive like the sky, sending over as a gift of reunion to the people who were still guarding this land in the harsh winter. The Volga river flowed day and night. The spring tide bursting from beneath the ice and snow exulted with great passion that was repressed for the whole winter and would continue to occupy the entire spring.

As soon as Ivan spreaded out the letter on the bank of mother Volga, he knew what to write in reply:

"Alive and healthy. Take care. Vanya."

Three months were fleeting by like a bullet. Wang Yao still wrote to him, but the letter stopped mentioning about each other or the war. In these short and concise notes of phenological observation, there was only the eternal mother—the land herself. Even bathed in blood and fire, the land resilliently carried on its own eternal cause, raising fresh sprouts from bombed broken branches and grass and flowers from burned soil. Even if in the next second, those green poplar leaves turned purple from explosions and the snowy white chokecherry petals were painted dark red by young men's blood.

These letters were no longer sent from the peaceful Ural mountain area, but from the frontier. After graduating from Ural military school, reconnaissance lieutenant Wang Yao wasn't deployed to the battleline where Ivan was located at. In the gaps of battles, Ivan would spend time reading these hurriedly written observation notes over and over. They were the messages sent forth by the land through the eyes and the pen of his lover.

Every letter written in reply was the same, "Alive and healthy. Take care. Vanya."

Half a year later, his troop left Stalingrad in ruins. That night, standing on the Mamayev hill, he gazed with his red eyes upon the flame-raging city that he had defended with his life; his figure was like a statue. White lights emitted from the launching "Katyusha" rockets hovered above his head, forming a halo that would never burn out. Volga mother river roared the blood of her sons and daughters, singing solmen songs for the troops that had gone afar.

With blood-stained footsteps, the battleline pushed westward across the warscarred land everyday. Ivan still wrote the same thing in every letter—"Alive and healthy. Take care. Vanya." These words were sent to his parents and sisters, except Wang Yao. He couldn't even remember when they lost touch of each other. One day in the beginning of 1944, he suddenly remembered that his address at the front had changed several times. When he wrote to inform Wang Yao, his lover's address had already changed, too.

Alas, these were the scouts! The highest glory and the most arduous test in the frontier all belonged to them. When missions caused their sudden contact change, they often had time to tell their families at the rear who had fixed addresses, but had no time to tell each other who were in different troops.

In war time, people often lost touch like this.

...It was an early morning in the spring of 1944, Ivan lay down on the hill where a deadly battle was been fought. His platoon leader died on the previous evening and soldiers just finished burrying him under the yellow soil.

Some nimble footsteps came from afar and stopped beside him. The people above sent the new platoon leader.

"Soldier Braginsky! Why didn't you salute your superior!"

"Ah—ha— Haven't met you for two years. Now you're putting on the airs in front of me." He didn't even open his eyes.

"Offending the lieutenant. You'll go to detention…"

He felt that the stranger bent over toward him, perhaps attempting to lift him up. He suddenly sprang up, grabbing the stranger's back and thighs, and putting the lieutenant entirely in his arms.

The shy and riled expression at once filled the lieutenant's dark eyes—those horse-like dark round eyes! The lieutenant's handsome face was burried deeply in his shoulder, as if feeling unease to what was about to happen—which was exactly what Ivan did! He carried this slender body affectionately and walked around the base to show those people—righteous people—who had withstood the test of war of how much strength he had and what a person he was loving. Afterall, the proverb said, "A burden of one's own choice is not felt".

…People grabbed Ivan's limbs and carried him onto a simple stretcher made of canvas covers. Their own people's fighter jets showering with fire-like morning glow swept above the hill and swirled above the horizon. A giant cloud of black smoke and fire rose above the sky, slowly moving towards the crescent on the west sky.

He turned away his face. The wounded land had began healing his war trauma with the melting winter snow, covering slits and craters with spring grass. The land commited all her attention to the small lives growing inside her; she was too busy to worry about his life. In fact, whether he lived or died, they would win in the end—this became obvious as the war had moved to the spring of 1944.

He reached out his hand and pressed on the pocket in front of his chest—there lay a piece of tree bark with "И" and "Я" written on it, adhering to his throbbing heart. Inside his heart, a little girl said happily, "People who love each other always stay together, right inside the heart…"

If he died, then his lover would never know that when he was thrown into the air then dropped on the ground by shock waves and passed out, he still saw his beloved one walking toward him…

But death merely marked his twenty-third year of life with a piece of shattered steel. After his recovery, he quickly returned to the front, pushing toward the nest of the Fascists. He didn't know that the powerful shock wave during the explosion had cause him severe neurological damage. The harm lurked in the deepest of his nerve and was only discovered after the war. The episodic vertigo, headache and angina had tormented him for his entire life.


	40. 1945

Ch 40 1945

Over the past four years, the public had grown into the habbit of listening to battle reports from radio or loudspeakers, if the situation allowed. In 1941, their faces were grim and sombre; after four years of struggle in tears, sweat and blood, in the spring of 1945, the grief and indignation were replaced with optimism and joy.

Victory wasn't out of reach. She was nearby. Almost here.

In the spring, Toris Lorinaitis was listening to the battle report from the military hospital. He was severely wounded in April and his right leg below the knee was amputated. The ambulance carried him to Moscow and they put prosthetic on him.

It was a warm evening of May, he stood up from the wheelchair and made the first step with his prosthetic. The setting sun looked over the hallway window of the hospital and cast dazzling purple and red glow upon him. Outside the window in the lilac bush, several skylarks were mumbling in their dopey conversations.

A burst of sorrow rose up in his heart. He suddenly lost his balance and fell on the floor. The prosthetic hit the ground, producing a dull sound.

"Comrade! Please be patient. You will eventually get used to it…"

"I will!" He supported himself with the elbows, one hand stubbornly (but still in a polite way) pushed away the nurse's hand who wanted to help him up. "It has been four years. We have gotten used to many difficult things…"

Toris struggled up. He put his abraded right hand on the handrail, moving forward in slow and difficult steps. When he reached the end of the hallway, he let go of the handrail, turned around and walked back toward the nurse in his unsteady steps, slowly but firmly.

"Sister, I would very much love to live on!" The young man who was always quiet and humble said loudly, "Even if losing both legs, without arms, eyes or being disfigured from gasoline bombs, I would still love to live on!"

He didn't know the name of this nurse who had short light blonde hair, so he just called her sister like many other wounded soldiers in the hospital. She wasn't even thirty yet, but on her modest and loving face there was a motherly expression—an expression on the faces of many women who lost families from the war but bravely undertook life's burden.

"Living is a brave and wonderful thing!" Melancholy swept across her blue eyes. "Your family will be very happy."

"I lost my family before the war." He replied peacefully with a smile on his face, "So from then on, I learned to be brave."

"I'm so sorry…But you must have a girl? How can a good boy like you not have a lover? She will be happy too…"

He turned his face toward the window. The setting sun reflecting in his eyes was burning quietly.

"Perhaps there was one…or it was just my wishful thinking…" Suddenly he turned around and said with a serious face, "Why bother thinking about these things? I have so much to do. I will go back to Moscow University and finish my study. I'll become an astronomist…"

"But why don't you go find her? She must be waiting for you…"

"Let her think that I'm dead. She's so beautiful. I hope she finds a healthy man, someone better than me…"

He didn't finish the sentence because to his surprise, an uncontrollable anger was flashing inside the nurse's tender-looking eyes.

"Coward! Coward…I thought you were a hero…but just another coward! She must be waiting for you but you are hiding from her…No matter what my Andrei looks like when he comes back, he's always my husband and my children's father…They sent me his death notice back in '42, but come to think of it now, maybe they collaborated to lie to me while he hid himself in a disability sanatorium somewhere…One day, I will go through all the sanatoriums in the country and catch him. I will look into his eyes and say, 'Ah, you coward. You were never afraid of the Fascists but afraid of your own wife…'"

Her voice was hoarse, but she didn't cry. Maybe, all her tears had dried up for long. She quickly wiped her eyes with the back of her slender hand and her voice became apologetic,

"I'm sorry, comrade…Go rest, don't stay up too late…"

Toris couldn't fall asleep. In the vast sea of snorings, he lift up a corner of the window curtain by his bed. Moscow had removed the light control at night and the golden lights inside hundreds and thousands of windows appeared before his eyes.

A gallant figure far away remained recognizable. It was the bronze statue of Pushkin in the street park. In that harsh early winter's evening of 1941, he held the girl's hand for the first time in his life at the feet of the poet who sang for love and spring.

And now in this night of lovely May, an entire sky's brilliant stars above the poet's head could not match the one in the north sky—the bright and sublime beauty. She was like a lovely girl, radiating all her light and beauty upon the land. In those early years that was never to return, the first star he saw on Feliks' balcony with uncle Lukasiewicz's telescope was her.

He looked upon the distant night sky with all his tenderness from childhood to his adolescent years, and perhaps, fell into a dream. At the break of dawn, earth-shaking outcrys woke him up.

He missed the important announcement on the radio in his sleep, but in an instant he knew and threw himself into the sea of laughters and tears—

"Ura! Ura! U—ra—"

After one thousand four hundred and eighteen days and nights of gunfires, and after sacrificing twenty-seven million lives, what else could possibly make everyone laughing out loud and bursting into tears at the same time.

That day was May 9, 1945.

Toris dragged his prosthetic and jumped off the bed. Doctors, nurses, wounded soldiers, workers—all the moving, talking, breathing people inside the hospital were shouting, laughing, crying, hugging and kissing. He got out from one hug before falling into the next. The old doctor in charge called out a few young soldiers who had recovered to go fetch several barrels of precious home-made wine from his nearby home. The wine was made for welcoming his sons from the war, but none of them returned to the old father.

"Drink, drink, my dear…" The old doctor poured everyone a cup like a father, "We've been pretty harsh on you, but today is an exception…"

Toris drank up the first cup of wine, then dressed up and stumbled out of the hospital, rushing into the first day of peace. Everywhere on the streets were Moscow citizens running out from their homes. Hats in all shapes and sizes were thrown high into the air. Someone took down the wooden sign of "bombshelter" from the wall, slammed on the ground and danced on top of it.

He walked among the cheering crowd like a toddler just learned to walk. In the street park not far away, among the jolly violins, accordions and trumpets stood the immortal Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. The poet stepped over the ninteenth century, over that early winter's evening of 1941 and over this mild spring night, rejoicing with everyone in the first day of peace.

By the poet stood a girl. She was singing. In Toris' memory, she was always in army coat and army boots, with hair bun tightly tide at the back. But today, May 9, 1945, for the first time he saw the girly appearance that should had always belonged to her. She was in a dress of blue and white and a pair of delicate leather shoes. The blonde hair was let down, gently waving in the fresh morning wind. She won this day with her four years youthful life in the war.

Tears blurred his vision. His entire heart could feel that her face was shining golden sunlight but stars were gleaming in her eyes. The stars swept across her face and silently fell onto her singing lips.

It was her, Natasha. She was as beautiful as the peaceful day itself.

"Natasha! My girl! My singing little star!"

Natasha pushed through the crowd and came to him. She didn't shake hand with him, nor hug or kiss. She knelt down solemnly and placed her lips on his prosthetic.

* * *

><p>-TBC<p> 


	41. 1945-1961

Ch 41

Ivan Braginsky celebrated the Victory Day in Berlin. That day, he fired all the bullets that were left in his rifle into the air. When he returned to his hometown Bereza, only his father came out to welcome him.

His mother passed away a month ago. Around that time, his big sister was working in Moscow and his little sister had been transferred back to the country along with her troop. When Tonya came home, their mother's body was still warm; when Natasha came home, they hadn't yet descended her coffin into the ground. And now, both of them returned to Moscow but neither wrote to him about the horrible news. Because victory was so close and he was coming back very soon.

Over the four years, death notices never ceased to loosen its claws of Bereza. In the summer of 1941, it pronounced Polina the fate of a widow; in the spring of 1945, it informed Frosya about her only son's death. Who could have possibly foretold to mama Braginsky of the next letter she received? Would it be "Your Vanechka" and "Your Natashenka" whom she had been pining for day and night? Or the unavoidable… "died in action"? Their healthy mother had a heart attack. The worries of her children tormented herself to death at the eve of victory.

Beside the table were several buckets of home-made wine. His father and him sat down face to face and started drinking from noon until starlit darkness. The old man babbled about the war, then suddenly started singing out loud; later, he shouted and cursed with the most malicious words that could be found in the world, and, in the end, lied on the table crying out loud.

"Here!" His father stumbled to the cupboard and retrieved a letter, "Sent home days ago…for you…"

Even that Ivan had been drunk to the bottom, he recognized Wang Yao's handwriting on the envelope with a glance. It was sent out from Moscow on May 9. His trembling fingers finally managed to spread out the letter, but there was only one sentence.

"I'm going back to mother."

He cried out loud in a drunkard's manner, just like his father. Ever since being shocked into an oblivion by the terrible news, he finally realized one thing—he had no mother anymore.

This summer, Ivan stayed in the village with his father and helped with the farming. Neighbors often invited him to their homes and asked him to talk about the life at the front. They wanted to picture out how their lost husbands or sons were living.

Demyan Morozov left behind three little Morozovs; the oldest was only eleven. Anatoliy Chaplin left with a pair of eight-year-old twins. Zhora Virbitski left with his newly-wed wife. Mishka Volkov left with some old textbooks and a lonely mother who had dried up her tears. The only thing that comforted the old lady was that, unlike those who died on the battlefield far away, her son, a guerilla fighter, was hanged by the invaders right inside their village. She could bury him under the home soil and visit him from time to time. "Vanechka! Good boy!" She once said to Ivan, "In other families, their sons and daughters died and left their mamas all alone. You three all survived. I almost wanted to call up Matrena from the grave and let her take a good look at you…"

In the slack season, Ivan often went to his mother's grave. He would lay his head on the slightly elevated mound, letting his body hid under the tall grass—like an infant lying in the cradle—and gazed upon the silver crescent above his head. The moon was like a sickle the farmer left behind, falling into the endless field-like sky.

The land beneath him continued with her own eternal cause, accepting deaths and giving lives. She bare all the flames and gunpowders of this world, but soothe them with her pliable, strong and all-embracing heart. He could feel the sound of the bustling lives budding in the deep ground—though, he didn't hear it directly, but from another person's heart.

That person must be familiar with everything about the land. Because that person was a young biologist—like him, was "worker of the land", and, like him, was life itself. That person had once lay inside his arms and told him that the land was like mother. But now he had returned to his own mother.

Ivan took out the juju that was hanging on his chest. He fulfilled the promise not to unwrap the pendant until the day of victory. The ancestors of the little girl who owned this juju were probably nomads living on horseback. The delicate pendant of a little white horse was like his handsome Kostya, especially those dark round eyes…Wang Yao gave him this little white horse that symbolized happiness and safety, so he indeed lived to the peaceful days. But what did he give to Wang Yao in return? A portrait painting. In the end, he couldn't resist but to draw on the eyes and, thus, the story of painting eyes on dragon became true. His lover never lied to him…

"I will find you. There's not a person that Ivan can not find."

In September, 1945, Ivan went back to the art academy of Moscow and continued his study. The episodic vertigo, headache and chest heaviness forced him to go to see a doctor. The nerve damage crawling inside his body since 1944 was confirmed and would follow him for the rest of his life.

The war had ended, but the damage it caused would stay with his generation forever. Many passed away from relapses of old injuries, but Ivan, with the permanent nerve damage, lived from twenty-four to ninety. He lived longer than others, and sufferred more than them as a result.

Then, he didn't know that he would live that long; he was only deteremined to gather up the courage to keep on living. Everything he had witnessed at the frontier over the four years called out to him from the depth of his heart, "Draw us, Vanya! Let people in the future see what had happened on this piece of land."

He missed Wang Yao very much. He began to imagine how Wang Yao would had fought and lived in his own country. Then, the angina would act up. Thus, when his lover surfaced under his brush, he thought that this handsome dark-haired young man was by his side…

Except that under those brows had been cloudy all along.

Anyone had once been young—the wonderful, unrevivable youth! To people in love, what they promised each other meant their entire future. Back then, the most willing confession was—"I will find you again…"

The brilliant war-theme artist and professor Braginsky had also been young once. Then, he gradually became a middle-aged man. When he was young, he thought that he had nothing to be afraid of after coming back from the battlefield. But his growing age told him that what was more challenging than war was life itself.

In fact, the professor did have opportunities to visit China through academic exchange, but he always ended up ripping the completed application form. As long as he went to China, he would find Wang Yao—he was certain of this. In 1956, he occasionally discovered the name that had long occupied his heart on a biology journal, with the author's contact information included at the end of the paper. The professor pondered over the biology jargons for a long time and came to a ridiculous conclusion—that this biologist had already married and had children.

In fact, it was natural to come to such a conclusion. It would be abnormal not getting married for a man in his mid-thirty with a successful career. By this standard, he was rather eccentric. Thus, their gathering was unnecessary. If he wanted to see him, all he needed was closing his eyes and he would see that handsome, clever and tender young man from 1941.

But the letters to Wang Yao still needed to be written, except that every time he finished a letter, he ripped it into pieces in fits of chest pain and headache. One day, he finally managed to glue the envelope before going nuts, but when he got to the post office he realized one crucial thing—that it was already 1961 and the relations between the two countries had worsened beyond repair. The letter could not possibly be sent out.

Over the years, he had kept a plain-looking diary—the same one he waved in his hand to tease Wang Yao some twenty years ago. He wanted to know his lover's past, but back then he didn't know a single Chinese character. After the war, with many years of input, he finally managed to learn some Chinese, although being an adult with nerve damages, learning a new language was no easy task. In the deep night, he would bury his head in a Chinese-Russian dictionary, trying to read this diary. Thus, the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth years of Wang Yao's life slowly unfolded before his eyes.

He saw Wang Yao inviting classmates into his dorm and the little rooms was filled with laughter, singing and the sound of accordion. He saw Wang Yao winning first place of biology contest and the old teacher asked him, "Wang, would you like to be a biologist in the future?" He saw Wang Yao anxiously putting on the clothes he would be wearing on the graduation dance, hoping to dance with his lovely classmate Lerika…

Back then, they didn't know each other; they didn't know about the war.

On the last page of the diary was a paragraph that Wang Yao left him on the morning of February 15, 1942 before sneaking out while he was still in his sleep. To be exact, it was a poem, like the ones Wang Yao read to him before.

_Evening woods once accompanied the floating clouds_

_Autumn's echo suffused with the setting sun_

_Countless hands inked red and grey in this world, (but I mourn over)_

_A heart of sadness (that) could not be drawn.*_

The professor read again and again, and searched the dictionary over and over but still couldn't comprehend what was written. He was forty years old after all.

* * *

><p>"Evening Lookout in Jinling" by Gao Chan (848-898)<p> 


	42. 1961-1967

Ch 42

Time never ceased its hasting pace. It retracted youth from the older generation and handed to the younger ones. In the autumn of 1961, Lyuba Orlova got married. The elder folks rejoiced for the celebration as it was the first wedding in the next generation.

The next generation. Eleven-year-old twins Masha and Katya Lorinaitis were studying their cousin's wedding dress, with little girls' typical yearning of the bride. Fourteen-year-old Feliks Lorinaitis wasn't interested as he was discussing the soccer game on yesterday's television with cousin Andrei Orlov. The little Andrei who came to this world in that dreadful day was now nineteen-year-old architecture student, so handsome and cheerful, just like the pilot Andrei back then…

Tonya was at the most honourable seat of the table, wiping her tears from time to time. During the wedding, she whispered to her brother sitting next to her, "Get married, Vanya…How terrible it would be with no one by your side when you get old…"

"How about you, Tonya?" He knew that his reply was cruel.

"I have my children." His sister said in a low but firm voice, "But what do you have…"

Until the fifties, Tonya could still be called pretty. If she wanted to remarry, there would be someone who wanted to marry her. But to her, the only man of this entire world flew the burning jet into the Fascist's and died with the enemies in 1942.

Marriage. It's a word many people had mentioned to Ivan over the years—from his colleagues, neighbors, friends and families…Even fourteen-year-old Feliks asked him when he came to visit, "Uncle Vanya, why haven't you got married yet?"

Feliks had just reached the age of passing love notes and watching movies with girls—there were many things he didn't understand. Feliks' parents got married in 1946. The newlywed couple traveled to Poland and in Warsaw they saw many deserted houses in the Jewish residential areas with doors and windows tightly shut. They heard from the locals that many Jewish people were taken away from their homes during Nazi occupation and never returned. Their houses were left behind with the doorplates remained by the door, like the tombstones outside of empty graves.

There was a house with "Lukasiewcz" carved on the outside. Toris stood in front of that house for a long time. One year later, he became a father. Natasha agreed with his request and named the blonde little boy "Feliks".

Now, the Moscow Planetarium researcher Toris Lorinaitis was sitting with his son in Ivan's home, "Vanya, get married." Toris' eyes were full of sympathy as he lowered his hand to gently stroked the prosthetic, "Two people living is easier than one. If it wasn't Natasha, it would be very difficult for me…"

"Your injury is on the leg, but mine is in the nerves. In the heart." Ivan tap his chest, "From the outside I have all four limbs, but my inside is already screwed up. Do you understand, Toris?"

"That's why you need someone to take care of you. For us veterans, the most fearful thing is to get old with no one except your own injuries. There are still good women out there…"

"How I envy you, Toris…You married the one you loved…"

In the spring of 1962, Professor Ivan Braginsky got married.

Her name was Anya. She was an ordinary middle school teacher in Moscow. A good girl, although passing the age of forty, she was indeed a "girl"—one of the thousands of old girls the war left behind. The day they went to register, Anya cried, "Vanya, forgive me!" She wiped her face, "I can't forget Volodya…"

"I understand you very much, Anya. You and I are the same generation…"

Under Anya's attentive care, Ivan's fits occurred less often. Like Toris said, two people living was easier than one. Especially when people got older, they often married not out of love, but in need of accompaniement. He and Anya respected each other, looked after each other, and undertood each other. He let Anya hang her hidden photos on the wall and came to know the second lieutenant Volodya Kolosov who died in rural Kursk of 1943. It was human nature after all, as he also kept that diary…

He had stopped reading the diary. Perhaps it was because that Chinese characters were too hard to learn that reading them always gave him a headache. There was no Ivan in that diary, just like there was no Wang Yao in his pre-war era diary. What remained in those diaries were the student years free of trouble, worry and care that would never return; the collective memory of his generation of that distant and pure time that stopped abruptly in the summer of 1941. He pushed the diary into the bookshelf's very end, and the teenage-year memory was no longer recalled.

What he often recalled was his adolescent years. The memory started from the first day of the war and easily tested each individual's nature. This memory was the grimmest and the cruellest. The emotions it held were also the purest and most beautiful. This memory had its own witnesses—not only a diary, but also a stack of letters in the forms of environment observation notes, a small piece of bark with the first letter of their names carved on it, a portrait painting that he had been working on for years but hadn't the courage to finish off with the eyes, an all-knowing, all-powerful juju in the form of a little white horse pendant…

He had always worn that pendant in front of his chest. When he was forty-five years old, as he carried his half-year-old son, the infant's little hand accidentally broke off the string. So, he tied the pendant with another string that he had been worn on his wrist for over twenty year—it was the hair band that he snatched off from Wang Yao's hair and clenched in his sweaty palm into sleep in that unforgettable night. Now, it adhered onto his chest, just like what Wang Yao did that night.

Sometimes, he would raise the pendant in front of his eyes and have a good look at the little white horse's dark round eyes, and hold the hair band against his face. Then, he would breathe the fragrance burried under the soft dark hair—those were the aromas of leaves and grass, the smell of the land.

Historians would write down that the Great Patriotic War lasted 1418 days and nights, with 27 million lives lost, that of all the men in the Soviet born between the years of 1921 and 1925, only 3 percent lived till the end of the war.

Historians would conclude the significance of the war and determine the milestones on historical timeline, but they would never know the kind of conversations taken place inside the trenches, the songs sung around the campfire, how the snub-nosed sniper wrote his home letters on cigarette papers which he saved up from everyday, and how the blue-eyed pilot turned into a ball of flame with his hawk while his comrades could only watch.

The generation that encountered the war as they reached adulthood, that were now getting old and perished with their old injuries—they would preserve these details in their memories forever, even if not a single history book would mention them. Let alone the first and only love in Ivan Braginsky's life bloomed in the most arduous winter of 1941.

Love. Only in the youthful years could a person give the entirety of his heart without reserve or expecting anything in return, without regards of nationalities, genders or even their own futures.

…Many years later, one would only wish to be able to meet such a person and say to him, "Do you remember? Do you remember? We were once so young…" even if merciless time had left weariness on their hearts by then; even if they had dedicated most of their lives to someone who could not reminisce with them.

On May 9, 1967, the young architect Andrei Orlov got married. That day, the newlywed couple and their families went to the Red Square to put flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers which was just completed. In fact, every year on May 9, the war generations would walk on the Red Square. Many veterans would hold wooden signs to search for their old-time comrades; however, not all were veterans. For instance, there was an old lady looking terribly old who would carry a wooden sign that had aged with her, and what written on it, "Looking for my son: Oleg Petrovich Feodorov, missing from December 1941 in Battle of Moscow". People all knew her because she was there since 1945…

This time, Tonya didn't cry. At night when everyone went to her home for the wedding dinner, Lyuba's four-year-old son stared at the photo of the air captain Andrei in curiosity and asked in his childish voice,

"Grandma, why does grandpa look like that? He's so young…"

"Dear, grandpa has always been a young man." answered Tonya, who was now over fifty.

"But why isn't grandma always young?"

"Because people can only be young once…"


	43. 1978-1980

Ch 43

People can only be young once—so Tonya spoke.

Tonya passed away in the beginning of 1978. In her will it instructed how she shall be burried. The mourning relatives hurried to her death bed and saw her lying in the casket like a slim young girl, with a long veil covering her face. People would almost think that it was a bride lying there if it wasn't the withered arms beneath the cuffs.

"I remember this dress." Natasha gently wiped away her tears with handkerchief. "Forty years ago when Andrei took her from the village, she was wearing this dress." Beside Natasha stood her niece Lyuba who was now over forty years old, "I want to bury mama beside papa…but nobody ever told us where papa was burried…" The relatives comforted each other and finally decided to bring Tonya back to her hometown Bereza, the place where her life and love began.

Beside his sister's, his parents' graves were immersed in deep grass. Professor Braginsky stood in front of the graves for a while, then headed toward the woods outside the village. The village itself had undergone tremendous changes; only the woods remained as it was in his memory, endearing and beautiful. But he let her down. Ever since the day he followed the troop reclaiming Bereza in 1941, he never set foot on the ground for the next several decades. Every inch of land and every single tree would remind him unceadingly that he had once been young and strong, passionate and happy.

One of many life's lessons: never revisit the land of happiness. But when a man had lived for almost sixty years and discovered that people his own age were passing away one after another, a sense of urgency toward life compeled him to do outrageous things like in his youthful years.

In this woods there was a place of bliss. He discovered it when he was still a little boy and, with a child's selfishness, kept it as a secret from everyone else. Later, in that starry night of 1941, in this blissful place, he protected himself and his beloved one inside his arms. Even to this day, he still remembered the pity and tenderness in his heart, the lovely body covered with wounds inside his arms, those cracked and swollen lips, and that face that was pale from the torture but rosey from shyness. Even though he had seen Wang Yao in his stronger and more handsome times, but whenever he recalled, his memory was filled with the look when Wang Yao was rescued from the gibet.

But now, this place hid another little boy. The boy threw a threatening glare at the professor and put his index finger in front of his lips—the professor understood right away. This freckled little genius was like little Vanechka, discovering this excellent spot as his own stronghold, and it would be very frustrating if this piece of information was revealed to other little friends. Suddenly, the little boy jumped out with a piece of tree branch in his waving hand, and after running away for some distance, started shouting in his tall and bright voice, "Ura—"

Young boys' cheering voices came from every corner of the woods, accompanied with running steps of many pairs of little boots. Boys of every generation played war games like this, just like himself when he was seven years old half a century ago, thinking that fighting in war was feat of romantic heroism and nothing more.

The professor left quietly. The land of bliss that was once only known to himself had now more witnesses than himself and his lover. Today, the freckled boy claimed it for himself just like how Vanechka once took fully advantage in his own fighting game. But that little boy would never know what kind of love once rooted here.

Because Vanechka grew up and went to the front so that this little boy didn't have to when he grew up.

In the Victory Day of 1980, Ivan shed tears in the Red Square. He didn't see the old mother who had been looking for her son year after year—and never had he ever after. "Be optimistic, Vanya!" comforted Anya, "Maybe she found her son so she doesn't need to come…" she cried too before finishing the sentence.

Anya was indeed very understanding. There was even once that she said, "Vanya, send a letter to China…"

And now, he could. If, during the first few years after the war, it was that he didn't want to contact Want Yao due to his own tangled mind from the nerve injury, then in the next decades, it was the tension between the two countries that blocked the possibility of reconnection. But now, as they entered into the eighties, relation with China was no longer hostile. The Chinese scientist's paper along with that significant name reappeared on the academy's biology journal. The professor quickly noticed this change because he had subscribed this journal, even though he couldn't understand a page.

The professor clenched the journal in his hand and comtemplated for long. He walked to the easel and lift the curtain that covered it. Over the years, he had created many distinguished paintings, but stubbornly refused to finish the one in front of him. "It's already very touching, even before it's finished." said students, colleagues and everyone who saw the painting. "If it could only have the eyes drawn…what a great work it would be…"

"Dragon is the freest of all. Who could've bound a dragon? It would fly away once it has eyes…"

Only he knew that the true artwork had flewn away with Wang Yao back to the faraway country of China years ago. The one before his eyes was merely a replica.

Artworks may be replicated. But the soul infused from his intricate emotions of death and birth, of farewell and reunion in that fateful night, like his own youth, would there never be a second copy.

He felt that Wang Yao's entire soul called out to him from this unfinished portrait, "How self-justifying, Vanya! Who told you that I was married and had children? Who told you that!"

"But we got to go on living, Yao…" He muttered to himself, "People could only be young once…"

In the youthful years, one lived bold and recklessly and was proned to the flame of love, as one believed that his time was inexhaustible. But middle age didn't need such temperament, save only restraint and toil. Ironically, when coming into the old age, the reckless and enamored temperament would awkwardly resurfaced in the inappropriate time, like an old house caught fire. Because then, he knew that there wasn't much time left.

As for the letter, Professor Braginsky didn't write it afterall. He quickly came to know from the biology journal that an important international academic convention would take place in Moscow State University. Among the lists of attendees, the name "Wang Yao" glaringly hurt his eyes. "I'm just going to look at him, from faraway." The professor justified to himself over and over, "What could two old guys possibly have anything to say…"

The last impression they left on each other's hearts were at the most handsome, passionate and powerful time of their life. If so, why bother meeting again? But the professor finally reconciled with himself, that people eventually got old, and if he couldn't face old age unperturbed, how could he reminisce and face his own past?

He went to Moscow State University alone. Anya went to Kursk with their children several days ago. She wanted to see the second lieutenant Volodya Kolosov. In her words, Volodya was a good guy and would never blame her for marrying someone else; but if she kept refraining from visiting him, he wouldn't feel too great in the afterlife…

As the Chinese biologist walked out of the car, it only took professor Braginsky one glance before he hurriedly left. Although he was already sixty and had poor nerves, but the eyes of a scout and a painter were dependable. He could tell from a glance that it was not how Wang Yao could look when he aged.

In other words, the name that appeared along with published papers on the Soviet journal since the fifties as well as the mailing address that had occupied his mind for decades were only corresponding to another person. He should have thought of it, since Wang Yao told him that there were millions of people with the last name "Wang" in China and quite a few by the whole name "Wang Yao" as well.

He walked faster and faster, not able to slow down his steps. When he arrived home which was located at the art academy, he was already too exhausted to care. Next day, their children accompanied Anya home. The old lady's mouth surrounded with wrinkles stretched a sad smile, and so, he understood. Anya probably had found Volodya in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers. His wife was more fortunate that him.

Several months later in her last hours, Anya gripped Ivan's hand in all her strength and murmured,

"Vanya, forgive me! I can't forget Volodya…"

And he lay his head to her ears covered by white hair,

"I understand you very much, Anya. We're the same generation…"


	44. 2005

Ch 44

People could only be young once. So it was said. But some people were foreverly young. Like those youthful men and women who never came back from the battlefield. Like the Pushkin statue in the street park.

People living near the Pushkin Square could often see an old couple taking their walks. There was something wrong with the old man's right leg but he insisted on not using a wheelchair; the old lady would support his right side with her hands. Many people recognized them—the distinguished astronomist Toris Lorinaitis and opera singer Natalia Lorinaitis. But those were their reputations later. In the most beautiful, passionate and powerful time of their life, he was a scout and she was an army nurse.

After they got married, they lived in the suburb of Moscow near the Planetarium where Toris worked. Since retirement, their elder son Feliks brought them to the city to live together, near the Pushkin Square. Now, this big family had the fourth generation. In the sixtieth anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War, President Putin said in a speech to the teenagers, "…Ask these veterans about things happened during the war, my children. Because you will be the last generation to hear it from them…"

The children wanted to dig out some marvelous legends from them, but those awe-inspiring names were only a small fraction. Most veterans were people like them—an ordinary soldier who faithfully fulfilled a soldier's duty. Thus, in their voices and actions, there preserved a simple, earthy sensibility

On May 9, 2005, the 60th anniversary celebration of the Victory of the Great Patriotic War was held in the Red Square. Before the parade started, president Putin said in his speech, "…May 9 was and always will be a sacred day for our country, a celebration that not only inspires and elevates us but also fills our hearts with a most complex mix of feelings—joy and sorrow, sympathy and nobility…"

On this day, after the march of soldiers, a total of 130 trucks carrying 2600 veterans chosen from previous Soviet Union countries traveled across the Red Square in the highest honour. Among them there was eighty-two-year-old Natasha. She cried. Even though the charming opera singer Natasha had received countless applauses and flowers throughout her career on stage, only this once was the honour dedicated to the army nurse Natasha…

When the celebration was over, Natasha took out a note from her pocket. It was what Toris handed to her before she left home whom repeatedly instructed her to only open it till this time. "The old fool!" the old lady shook her head. "Older than dirt and still thought we're dating…"

The evening glow rained down from the end of sky like a flaming waterfall, casting a golden crown on the two people who were sitting on the bench. Not faraway stood the Pushkin statue. If it wasn't the festive atmosphere everywhere in the park, it would almost feel like that distant autumn evening of 1941 when the nineteen-year-old scout Toris asked the eighteen-year-old nurse Natasha out for the first time…

"Natasha…Natashenka, listen to me…" He stuttered from the excitement, just like sixty years ago, "Today is our fifty-ninth wedding anniversary…"

"You old fool, Toris. It's obviously the sixty-third year."

"No, I remember very clearly. We got married in 1946, on the one-year anniversary of the Victory Day…"

Toris had to swallow down the rest of the sentence because Natasha gripped his hands tightly, just like decades ago when she taught the young soldier a lesson, and with a faintly mocking smile, "Comrade Lorinaitis, we clearly got married on Febuary 14, 1942, right in the October Station of Moscow. So stop arguing with me…"

To him, of course, she was always right. The good-tempered old man nodded with a smile and stared with melancholy into the distance, at the Pushkin who stayed foreverly young. "It has been sixty something years…but it feels like yesterday! Natasha, do you know? When I first asked you out here in 1941, I always felt that there were someone hiding behind that Pushkin statue looking at us…"

"Me too. Even after the war, everytime I passed here, I always felt as if there were two people behind it…they've been hiding there for sixty years." Her withered small hands pointed to the poet, "And even now, I feel that they're right there, as young as they were back then. Toris, do you believe something like this?"

"I do. You gotta believe in something magical…"

"Enough of that. Toris, where is the present you mentioned on your note? Take it out."

"It's right above us, Natasha."

Above them was the brilliant Milky Way. The city filled with lights was not suitable for observing stars compared to the Planetarium in suburb, but the stars tonight were even brighter than the festive lights of Moscow.

His arms surrounded her waist that had long lost the slenderness of a young girl, "Natasha, do you know? Many stars have long died out before we were born, but they left light and heat behind them, traveled thousands of lightyears and reached us."

"How can an astronomist's wife not know this…I also know that the Milky Way in the sky is the road of scouts…Toris! The entire frontline knew about your word! When I was in the parade during the day, an old gunner beside me was saying it…"

"How nice…"

"How nice." In low voice, she repeated his words. "I almost felt that I'm going to be young once again…"

At first, he didn't realize. But when her white-haired head fell on his shoulder and moved no more, he knew.

"Natasha! My little girl!" With the last bit of tenderness of his long life, he whispered into her ears that could hear no more, "My singing little star…"

When their children were here to find them, that most beautiful star in the north sky had already ascended to the highest place.

The generation that was dying out had undergone the cruellest test of blood and fire. But in their hearts still remained the belief of magical things—for example, that stars were actually a trail of eternal glorious footsteps, that before the end of life, there still remained the possibility to reunite with everything one believed and loved.

And now, in May 2011, ninty-year-old Ivan Braginsky could hardly find a person who could say to him, "Do you still remember? Remember how young we once were…"

But he believed that he could find one. As the train to Volga slowly driving out of Moscow, looking at the luxuriantly green field full of spirit and vigor, the bold confidence that belonged to the youthful years once again came back to the old professor. They were both the workers of the earth! And such exuberant land was like a promise of the reunion.

The passenger sitting on the opposite side was a lady. Although she only looked sixty, the professor knew that she was already seventy-six—because she was on the television the other day as a visiting expert on children education, Elizaveta Beilschmidt. Maybe she didn't know who he was, but she fixed her eyes on the little white horse hanging from his neck, then blinked those green eyes like a naughty little girl and spoke with a foreign accent,

"Sir, I don't know who you are, but I know who you love!"

All of a sudden, he remembered when he met her. So he smiled and said, "Then, do you know where my lover is?"

"Right here in the heart!" She pat her chest like a general, but spoke with a young girl's tone, "People who love each other always stay together, right inside the heart. My papa and mama were together…"

He could no longer lift her up high like he did with that little girl, but her laughter was still like seventy years ago, as if a nimble skylark with feathers colored by the frosted dawn, flying into the depth of the sky.

Without much hold back, the professor told her everything that he was willing to tell. After all, to someone who was ninty years old, there was nothing in the world that could embarrass him. They talked in a language that was typical to someone who had gone through the war, so the children and grandchildren beside the professor didn't understand too well.

"I'm going with you." She held his hand tightly, "I was planning to visit Volgograd in between my lectures, but detouring to Topol isn't inconvenient either. And I'd be glad to see my brother…Yes, don't be surprised. I ordered him to be my brother…"

The former "general" and now the education expert Elizaveta didn't tell professor Braginsky that a child's memory before the age of three was highly prone to mix-ups. The fact that the student remembered the youthful Wang Yao at the age of three wasn't believable.

But why tell him? To dissapoint him, and thus, to dissapoint herself? Whoever had witnessed happiness and believed in miracles since childhood would hardly be the beaten by time's burden.


	45. 2011 (FIN)

Ch 45

The Volga river turned outside the village of Topol, like a mother cradled her child in her arm. A quiet, beautiful and blooming village. It was hard to believe that sixty years ago when the Fascists were driven away, inside the Mother Volga's arm was a wasteland soaked in blood.

"To get control of Topol, we played tug of war with the enemy for a whole week outside the city of Stanlingrad." The old professor accompanied by his family and Mrs. Beilschmidt was filled with complex emotions after stepping on the land of Topol and seeing the tremendous change. "So the war has really been over for sixty years…"

The war had been over for sixty-six years and he hadn't seen Wang Yao for six-nine years.

"Are you looking for that Chinese man? Yes, he's always been young. He's in my home, I can take you there…"

The woman leading them was walking fast, remaining silent for the whole time. Afterwards, the professor couldn't recall how he felt then. All he remembered was that as soon as he walked into the woman's home, the portrait painting hanging on the living room wall dived right into his heart.

It was a true work of art that cannot be replicated, just like his youth and his love. It was like a real person, especially those dark round eyes—dignified, clear, tender and direct, just like seventy years ago.

"This is life itself!" The professor heard Mrs. Beilschmidt exclaimed behind him, "This is life itself…"

"My grandmother Nina Vasilyevna Samoylova was a nurse in the Volkhov division during the war. In 1945, she brought this portrait painting from the front." The housewife of this home handed a letter to the professor, "Last year before she passed away, she instructed us that if anyone comes here asking for the person in the painting, give him this letter."

…

_…I want to write down the story about this portrait painting—not only is it my only memento from the frontline, but as a generation that is slowly leaving this world, I have the responsibility to leave to my children those memories that shall never be forgotten._

_In the spring of 1944 during the battle reclaiming Novgorod, I pulled down a young reconnaissance lieutenant from the battleline. He had fatal injury in his abdomen. Before he died, he was still comforting me, "Don't cry…dying isn't scary…dying…is going back to mother…the land is mother…"_

_But I fell on his body and cried out loud. Over the three years, there were so many young, beautiful and brave people that I couldn't save and I thought that I had run out of tears…These are the things I found from his body: officer identification, two letters that were sealed in envelopes with addresses written on them, and a small note that wrote "If I died, please send the letters to my family and my lover on the day of victory. Reconnaissance lieutenant, Wang Yao."_

_I was in Moscow on the day of victory and sent out the two letters. One was to Yan'an in China and the other one was to Bereza that was 150 kilometers away from Moscow. Then, I returned to my homeland of Topol on the Volga carrying only this lieutenant's portrait on me. I carried this portrait on my body for over a year. It was found in his chest pocket when I was preparing his body along with a family photo and a star chart drawn in pencil. I burried the last two items with him, but couldn't for the life of me part with this portrait painting. That dignified and tender look and that faint smile eluting from his eyes all called out to me, that the land merely burried his body. The young man's beautiful soul still lived inside this vivid portrait…_

_I was planning to donate the painting to the war museum, but couldn't bear the thought of letting him live all alone inside the cold exhibition window. He's alive and should have gone home with me, even though all my families were killed during Nazi occupation…Life was hard after the war, but whenever I looked at the portrait on the wall and to those vivid eyes, I felt the utmost solace. "Little Nina, good Nina. Be brave. You have family here…" Later, I finally got married and had children. Day after day, year after year, this foreign young man was like my closest brother, witnessing how my family that had been destroyed by the war slowly rebuilt and bloomed into prosperity…_

_I lived in Topol for decades. When I worked in the field, I looked at the land that never surrendered under the iron hoof and continued feeding her children after warfire, I couldn't help but remember his last word, "The land is mother". To be able to speak such words, he must have understood and loved the land very much. I read from books that his homeland, the land of China, was also like our Russian land that had endured much burden but still flower in the spring._

_I don't know about painting. But I always thought that to create such a marvelous portrait painting for such a young man, it requires much more than technique! And the older I get, the more I am convinced by the idea that this portrait's creator must have the deepest understanding and love of the entirety of his soul. Because on this soldier's foreverly young face, there is the deep thought and loneliness caused by the war's torment, but also boundless hope and faith towards life and future which was a result of his youtful nature—and that, my dear, is the love that belonged to our generation…_

_The most comforting thing for our generation heading to old age was that the people later on never forget about the war. Take our relative's child for instance—ten years ago, the little guy was no more than three years old, but he stared at the portrait in deep thought. Two years later when I visited him in Moscow, he asked me, "Grandma Nina, how come that uncle isn't coming with you?" Then, I realized that whether a person had gone through war or not, that portrait was alive to him. I didn't correct the child's apparently confused memory and just simply said, "Dear boy, he's very well. He's always together with us…"_

_Last year, I heard that the boy got into the Moscow Art Academy. I believe that he'll be a brave person all his life, because whoever had been touched by that portrait's youthful soul will never surrender in life's struggle._

_My dear children, do you understand now? That is life…_

…

"I'm going back to mother…"

There was only one short sentence in the letter he received in 1945. If he was indeed as Nina Samoylova had said, "with deepest understanding and love of the entirety of his soul", then he should had realized by then.

He should had realized all along! When Wang Yao lied in his arms, he had told him that the land is mother.

But he didn't. As a punishment, the injury from the spring of 1944 had tortured him with angina for the rest of his life.

Ivan gingerly walked near, and placed his wrinkled face closed to his lover's foreverly young face.

"This is life…"

This is life itself. It had escaped all obligations and worries from this world and joined as a part into the all-loving land. The land was never divided by borders. She spreaded herself from the Volga river plain that was covered in bird cherry flowers to the bank of the Yellow River where iris blossomed.

"Please, my lady." Ivan reached out his clumsy hands to wipe away the rolling tears from Elizaveta Beilschmidt's face, "He doesn't need tears…"

Before leaving Topol, Ivan left the little white horse pendant which was tied with a hair band to the young housewife of the Samoylova's. "We will cherish this white horse pendant, just as we do with the protrait." The housewife said solemly, "He has always been a part of our family."

The education expert Mrs. Beilschmidt said goodbye to him at the train station.

"When you get old, you got to believe in those magical things." She said embarrassedly, "Although we only get to be young once…professor, may I ask you a favor? Could you call me 'general' one more time…"

He complied. The old former scout raised his shaky hand and saluted solemly to "General Elizaveta".

"How nice…" She smiled like a little girl with her green eyes glistering tears, "I can give orders again. Comrade, I order you to be young once more…"

May 8, 2011, Ivan Braginsky went home to Moscow. Without a second of rest, he sat in front of that unfinished portrait for a long time and stared at the non-existent eyes below those handsome brows.

"One only get to be young once." He said, "But you have been young for so many years, and you shall continue to be young, forever and ever… "

With a brief moment of thought, the professor took up the brush and painted under those brows, as if wary of the fleeting time. At the age of ninty years, it had been long since he painted with a young man's agile mind as he did today.

The next day was May 9. The professor entrusted his son to carry the protrait to the exhibit. By evening, his students came to Braginsky's apartment, cheering downstairs to let their respected teacher know what a great success this painting had achieved.

The professor quietly looked over to them from the balcony. Each of them were very young.

As the last trace of laughter had retreated from the campus, the brilliant Milky Way had lay high above him, like a brilliant trail of footsteps, crossing over the field-like night sky and spreading out into the faraway distance.

"Stars are the footprints of scouts. The Milky Way is the road of us scouts…"

A dull pain was pounding in his chest, and what accompanied was a buzzling noise by his ears. He covered his hands on his chest and murmured,

"For the sake of an old man, just let go of me once. You have been torturing me for sixty years anyway…"

He slowly walked down the stairs, pushed open the door and immersed himself into the lovely lukewarm night of May. The buzzling noise gradually transformed into a clopping sound of a horse. In the whole wide world, there was only one horse with such crisp and powerful clops.

"Kostya, my good boy!" He called out in tenderness, "My dear Kostya!"

Suddenly, a giant shadow casted on him. He raised his old eyes—there, a white horse with long silver mane was standing faithfully in front of him. The horse was muscular and in perfect build, truly a magnificent steed that could catch the stream of time. And he, the magnificent rider Vanya. Only such white horse could match as his ride.

A foreverly young scout was sitting on Kostya's back and reached out his hand to him,

"Come, Vanya! Let's go back to our own people!"

The thick white birch leaves rustled above his head, as if all the years and ages had fleet from his body.

Just as the all-knowing, all-being "General Elizaveta" had ordered, scout Vanechka had been young once again. He held onto Wang Yao's hand, hopped on the saddle and flied away on the starry road of the scouts, chasing after their own people.

[End]

* * *

><p>Ivan: 1921—2011<p>

Wang Yao: 1923—1944

Toris: 1922—2005

Natasha: 1923—2005

Tonya: 1916—1978

Elizaveta: 1935—

Wang Chunyan: 1930—

* * *

><p><em>Music suggestions:<em>

_Tchaikovsky 5th symphony_

_Rachmaninoff 2nd piano concerto_

_Shostakovich 7th symphony_


End file.
